LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf ..is. 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



WALKS ABOUT ZION 



.* 



Cen Lectures 






I. M. A 



TWOOD, D.D. 



BOSTON 
UXIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 

1882 






Copyright, 1882, 
By Univeksalist Publishing House. 



University Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



The Lectures here presented to the public were 
prepared in the regular course of the Author's min- 
istry, — (1) to afford his people the opportunity to 
look more at large over the wide field of relig- 
ious administration and effort ; and (2) to give 
his hearers their pastor's point of view in tak- 
ing such a survey. The reasons which have in- 
fluenced to publish the discourses are precisely 
those which led to their preparation originally ; 
namely, to present the facts and the considerations 
essential to a just opinion of the value of the 
different denominations of Christians, and to offer 
to those who may be interested to know it. or pos- 
sibly benefited by knowing it, the view which the 
Author takes of a common but by no means unim- 
portant subject of meditation. It is scarcely need- 
ful to add that the Lectures make no pretensions 
to any merits, historical or literary, beyond the 
very humble ones named above. 

I. M. A. 

Canton Theological School, 

August, 1882. 



Lc Control 



Number 




^P 9 * 028895 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 
The Good ^nd Evil of Sects 7 

LECTURE II. 
The Roman Catholic Church 23 

LECTURE III. 
The Episcopal Church . . , 41 

LECTURE IV. 
The Congregational Body 57 

LECTURE V. 
The Methodists 73 

LECTURE VI. 
The Baptists 89 

LECTURE VII. 
The Swedenborgtans 105 



6 CONTENTS. 

LECTURE VIII. 
The Unitarians 121 

LECTURE IX. 
The Universalists 137 

LECTURE X. 
The Spiritualists 153 



I. 

THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 



" There are differences of administrations, but the 
same Lord." — 1 Cor. xii. 5. 



WALKS ABOUT ZION. 



THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 

T AM going on a tour of friendly observation 
-*■ among the different Christian churches of our 
section of the country. I shall not visit ever} T one, 
but the more important ones. Those passed in re- 
view will be recognized as the chief sects in numbers 
or in influence, not only in New England but in the 
country generally. The Reformed (Dutch) Church 
and the Lutheran Church, both of them quite nu- 
merous and strong in some other sections, are not 
included in my scheme of pastoral visitation. But 
so far as their faith and order are concerned, they 
are sufficiently comprehended for my purposes in the 
Presbyterian and Congregational churches. The 
Free-will Baptists agree in doctrine with the Meth- 
odists, and in ceremonial peculiarity with the regular 
Baptists ; so that they do not call for separate men- 
tion. The Disciples or Campbellites, though nu- 
merous in the Southwest, can scarcely be called an 



10 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

influential sect. The Spiritualists, to whom I devote 
the closing lecture of the series, do not profess to be 
a Christian sect at all. 

It is now more than twenty years since I began 
my ministry. Born and reared in a Calvinistic 
church, I early forsook it for a sort of middle- 
ground between Christianity and Theism. Soon I 
gravitated to Universal! sm, and in its faith and 
service have spent the whole period of my major- 
ity. My ministry has been passed in three different 
States, and in twice that number of sharply-differ- 
ing communities. Fifteen years of it have gained 
for me the experience of an editor in addition to 
that of a minister, — an experience of great value 
as bringing me into relations of close knowledge of, 
if not of intimate fellowship with, the literature and 
the leading men of all the other sects. 

I trust I have not been misled in thinking I might 
be able, after so much professional experience, much 
of it gained under exceptionally favorable opportu- 
nities for forming correct opinions on such matters, 
to speak intelligently and instructively of the doc- 
trines, polities, and tendencies of my own and of 
sister churches. At any rate, I will try to speak 
sincerely and fairly. 

In this lecture it is proposed to clear the way to 
a just understanding of the general subject as well 
as render it easier to deal with in its several 



THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 11 

parts, by considering the good and evil of many 
sects. 

There are many persons who say, and doubtless 
there are many more who think, that the existence 
of so many differing sects in Christendom is a dis- 
credit to Christianity ; certainly a disadvantage. 
They say that if Christians were agreed among 
themselves, that fact would furnish to unbelievers a 
powerful" practical proof of the truth of our religion, 
and a captivating example of the unity and concord 
for which it professes to stand. But the multitude 
of sects jnto which the Christian church is split, and 
especially the fact that some of them hold to dogmas, 
which others expressly repudiate, while no general- 
ization known to the laws of thought begins to be 
comprehensive enough to cover and group the pecu- 
liarities of any half-dozen of them, joined to the 
further fact that in all former ages, and even in our 
own, the members of the various sects have often 
lived in relations the reverse of confidential and fra- 
ternal, have the effect to produce on the mind of the 
spectator an unhappy impression of human confu- 
sion and unsanctifiecl passions. 

The first thing to be said about this multitude of 
differing and often hostile sects is, that it is a neces- 
saiy incident of man's religious evolution. It would 
be better, obviously, if all Christians were agreed and 
could dwell together in unbroken concord. They 
could then employ the time and energy they now 



12 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

bestow on each other in united and uninterrupted en- 
deavors to carry the gospel to every creature, and 
in mutual edification. But this is the same thing as 
to say that it would be desirable to have them under- 
stand " all mysteries and all knowledge." The chief 
reason why Christians differ and are split up into 
many sects is, that they, in common with all other 
mortals, are yet incapable of apprehending the truth 
and apprehending it completely. It is evident, if 
every Christian saw the truth just as it is, and the 
whole of the truth, he would see the same thing as 
every other Christian, and all would see alike. But 
there never has been one since Jesus, probably, of 
whom this was true ; while as to the majority, we 
know that they are sadly wanting in intellectual and 
moral comprehension. The inevitable result is, a 
wide variety of views about doctrine, about the 
nature and authority of Jesus, about polities, and 
governments, and forms. These various views can, 
fortunately, be classified to a considerable extent ; 
otherwise we should have as many sects as there 
are persons. As it is, we have only so many as 
represent the principal divergences of opinion. 

It is to be recognized that there are some ver}^ 
important benefits flowing from this apparent mis- 
fortune. Just wiry our Creator saw fit to start us 
here in a condition of relative ignorance and imper- 
fection, we may not be able to guess. But we get- 
some hint of the reason in the great pleasure we 



THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 13 

have in the development of our powers and in the 
acquisition of knowledge. There is an indescribable 
delight in the process of unfolding the faculties of 
our nature and in the pursuit of information. So 
great is the satisfaction of mental growth, that an 
enthusiastic German thinker declared, that if the 
Genius of fate should present herself before him, 
holding in one hand the truth itself and in the other 
the commission to search for truth, he would delib- 
erately choose the latter. I do not quite run to this 
length of ecstasy over the mere privilege of pursuing 
the Divine object of our existence ; for I am of 
opinion that the pleasure of the pursuit depends on 
our success in grasping ever more and more of the 
good pursued. But I am filled with wonder and 
gratitude when I perceive how an apparent evil be- 
comes the occasion of so much and so exalted pleas- 
ure. And high as is the satisfaction of intellectual 
development, it is far outreached by the inexpressi- 
ble joy of growing in grace and in the knowledge of 
the truth. While I would not lay too much stress 
on the amount of that growth which is directly fos- 
tered by sectarian divisions and the multiform labors 
that ensue from them, I think it is but fair to allow 
that vastty more truth is seen while so many sharp 
eyes are looking from all the angles of the horizon 
than would be discovered if all stood on the same 
side and were intent on verifying the same prepos- 
sessions. The sects may be severally narrow, preju- 



14 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

diced, partisan ; but coming up from so many sides, 
exploring so many avenues, watched and criticised 
and compelled to show proofs, by all the others, 
they cannot help contributing to a broad general 
diffusion of light, nor prevent the actual truth from 
being soon discovered. 

At any rate, since human imperfection is a fact, 
and it is inevitable in consequence that we entertain 
partial views of the truth before we are capable of 
seeing it in full splendor, there can be no question 
of the advantage of diversities of gifts and differ- 
ences of administrations. It has often been observed 
that uniformity generally means deadness. It is 
nearly fatal to mental progress to have all classes 
either indifferent or perfectly agreed on questions 
of politics, society, science, and religion. And the 
reason is, not that it is depressing or stagnating to 
have uniformity in goodness or in correct opinions, 
but that, since in the nature of the case the good- 
ness and the correct opinions cannot be character- 
istic of all, and very likely are not of any one, the 
harmony is the result of ignorance rather than of 
knowledge, and of indifference or insincerity rather 
than of free and hearty enjo}'ment of conscious recti- 
tude. If our people were of that cast of mind they 
were comparatively careless what ideas the}' accepted 
or what policies they followed, as the' Celestials to 
a great degree are, we should have, like them, a 
dismal, unenlivening monotony of civilization, — 



THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 15 

a long historic road without a turn. Or if we had 
here an omnipotent State Church, such as they have 
in Russia, compelling all ranks to enter one church 
door, and if they cannot heartily approve at least 
refrain from opposing the doctrines and forms of the 
established religion, we should have, as they have, 
very little intellectual activity and no religious prog- 
ress. It is obviously better to allow the honest and 
inevitable differences of opinion to group themselves 
as they will, so that there shall be hearty sincerity 
in each division ; so that the mental and religious 
aptitudes of every class shall be met ; so that ever3 r 
man and woman shall have a congenial place to stand 
and work ; so that no part of the moral capacity or 
energy of society shall be lost ; so that by a various 
and stimulating rivalry, and by reciprocal criticism 
and comparison, all may be warmed up to the requi- 
site activity and have the largest inducements to 
both enterprise and good behavior. 

I think, also, we learn in the strife between our 
many sects a useful lesson in mutual toleration. 
Time was when here in New England sluj sect other 
than the ruling or Orthodox had a sorry chance for 
its life. All the facts of the history are conclusive 
to the point, that it would have continued to be so 
down to this hour if the multiplication of sects and 
their growth in the community, and the protection 
for fair competition granted them by the civil power, 
had not taught the Orthodox churches that in order 



16 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

to enjoy rights for themselves the}' must concede 
rights to the other sects. This was a hard but salu- 
tary lesson ; and now that it has been well learned 
who wishes to have it unlearned? Yet I would 
hardly dare to leave even the libertj'-loving Liberals 
to maintain a fair standard of toleration on the sub- 
ject of religion without the spur of the continual 
reminder that this is a reciprocal matter, and just 
what you desire for yourself is just what you must 
grant to others. 

But there are evils as well as benefits inseparable 
from the existence of many sects. To begin with a 
very noticeable one, just see how expensive a luxury 
sectarianism is. They are multiplying little chapels 
and meeting-places in this quarter of the city, 1 and 
maintaining them in a half-famished condition by 
great exertions, when the three principal churches 
already established here are large enough to take 
them all in and provide for them much more com- 
fortably than they can provide for themselves. Here 
are our Episcopal brethren, heroically canying on 
a hopeful movement, and by means of assistance 
from wealthier churches holding its course firmly 
and usefully in this comniunuy. But how much 
more economical for them to come in here where 

1 Cambridge in 1878. This passage contains the only strictly- 
local allusion in these lectures. But as it serves the purpose of illus- 
tration better than any fictitious case, I retain it in its original form. 



THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 17 

there is room and a welcome for them, and where it 
seems to us that the} T would do as much good and 
get more? The same general state of facts may be 
noted everywhere. Communities that could main- 
tain two churches handsomely are " supporting " 
six shabbily. Then each denomination must have 
its separate schools and colleges, its literature, its 
machinery of operation. It is clear enough that it 
would be a great saving of money and a great gain 
in efficiency if there could be a consolidation of 
forces. 

Candor, however, requires the admission that this 
presentation by no means exhausts the whole case. 
At first blush it seems as if the money adventured in 
these chapels, schools, and publication interests were 
so much that would otherwise flow into the treasuries 
of the older and better established. It seems as if, 
for example, we should be the gainers by haying the 
Episcopalians disband. But in point of fact it is 
not so. If St. James Church should close its doors, 
sell its property, and all its attendants come straight 
over here bringing the proceeds of the sale to add 
to our funds, that would be a help to us certainly. 
But let us suppose that society had not been organ- 
ized and that church never been built, — which is 
the true way to look at the matter : would those 
people have been here, and would the money that 
went into their house have gone into ours ? We all 
know they would not. That money was drawn out 

2 



18 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

by the appeal that particular movement made. You 
and I could not have got a dollar of it. Those people 
are collected there for a similar reason. It probably 
would not have made the difference of a dollar or of 
an attendant to us if that pleasant little church had 
never been erected. So that in reality the Episcopal 
enterprise in this part of the city is to be reckoned, 
not as so much abstracted from the others, but as a 
clear addition of so much to the moral and religious 
forces of this community. The same argument is 
applicable to the schools and publishing houses of 
each sect. They are the products of a liberality and 
a zeal to which only that particular denomination 
makes appeal ; and they are not to be reckoned there- 
fore as taken from, but as added to, what the others 
have produced. 

Another evil of many sects, is the partisanship 
and bad feeling that are engendered by the disputes 
and strifes between them. I have for many years 
had opportunity nearly every week- to examine repre- 
sentative journals of the principal sects, and indeed 
of most of the minor ones, in this country. I can 
testify that they are generally more courteous, can- 
did, and open to conviction than part}' political pa- 
pers are, especially during a campaign. But they 
are far enough still from being what they ought, 
either in respect of courtesy or fairness. There is 
the unpleasant bias of sect in all of them. It is hard 
for them to state the truth in a case of controversy, 



THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 19 

or to admit the facts when they tell against their 
side. Too much of their space as well as of their 
learning, eloquence, and wit are wasted on their 
theological or ecclesiastical opponents. It is not 
to be denied and cannot be concealed that the secta- 
rian warfare carried on between the different churches 
of the country is belittling, and of bad influence on 
those outside. 

But here again, we must distinguish between the 
real cause and the apparent cause. It is not because 
there are so mam 7 sects that there is so much un- 
seemly strife, but because there is so little genuine 
Christianity in them. Undoubtedly there are now 
more sects than there is any legitimate warrant for ; 
and the excess is an evil and a direct source of 
unnecessary irritation. But most of them are justi- 
fied as we have seen by the honest and inevitable 
differences of view which a developing, short-sighted 
humanity will be sure to have. The}' are not an 
evil, but a benefit and a necessity to man in his evo- 
lution towards full knowledge and perfect vision. 
The evil arises, where almost all evil does, in the 
abuse which hot-headed and not too pure-hearted 
men make of their privilege. They bite and devour 
each other because the madness is on them. And 
men did just so, and with far more terrible effect, 
when uniformity was the rule ; when there was but 
one church, and when the much-berated evil of 
sectarianism was almost unknown. I think on the 



20 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

whole I am safer from my Catholic or Orthodox 
brother's holy rage on this side the paling than I 
should be on that. He might roast me, or pull out 
my tongue, or break me on the wheel, or at any rate 
immure me in a dungeon, as his predecessors were 
wont to do with those who worshipped God in a way 
they called heresy. I much prefer his harmless 
literary whip to the cat-o-nine-tails his ancestors 
used to lay on the backs of such as I. 

In fact, when we come to look at it carefully and 
fairly, we see that the evils usually attributed to the 
existence of many sects are often no evils at all, and 
in other cases are properly referable to the old and 
bitter root of all our mischiefs, — human ignorance 
and depravity. If all the churches recognized the 
apostolic rule, — differences of administrations in- 
deed, but the same Lord, and diversities of gifts but 
the same spirit, — all legitimate sectarian divisions 
would be found to be helpful, as affording suitable 
platforms on which the various parties could stand 
in carrying on their respective parts of a common 
work, and appropriate centres of new moral influ- 
ence. In the present state of human knowledge, as 
always hitherto, it is to be expected that men equally 
able, equally learned, and equally sincere will take 
widely different views of the same subject. They 
will often stand arrayed on opposite sides of the 
same question. Nor, as I view it, is this to be 
regretted. But it is much to be lamented that when 



THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECTS. 21 

these men are disciples of the same Master, and 
thereby equally committed to the duty of speaking 
the truth in love, they cannot differ in amity, and 
discuss their differences and compare arguments in a 
fraternal spirit. It is even more painful to see that 
they are willing to convert themselves into petty 
popes and mutually disfellowship each other. One 
would suppose they would be too painfully aware of 
their lack of full knowledge to permit them to act as 
if the} r were omniscient. 

I am looking forward to the time when there shall 
be one view of God, of Christ, of man, of duty, and 
of destiny ; when there shall be one spirit and one 
thought in all hearts, and so one flock and one shep- 
herd. But I see it far, far down the stream of the 
ages. To-daj' we are not equal to seeing eye to eye. 
We are, I devoutly and thankfully believe, on the 
way to that blessed consummation ; and I am chiefly 
concerned with holding myself and aiding to hold 
others in such a fair and fraternal mood, that while 
we diligently pursue our several ways we do no 
violence to that spirit through whose gracious en- 
treaty we all at length shall be brought into unity of 
faith. 



II. 

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 



"And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and 
upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it." — Matt. xvi. 18. 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, 



FT makes a surprising difference what our point 
-*- of view is. Looking at affairs in South Caro- 
lina with Massachusetts eyes, they wear a very dif- 
ferent aspect from what they do as seen by South 
Carolina eyes. Again, it is possible to contemplate 
the same object under such altered relations and in so 
changed a light as to give it all the characteristics of 
another object. A friend of mine tells the story, that 
at a religious conference which he once attended were 
two clerg}Tnen who held a reciprocally unfavorable 
opinion of each other. It chanced that both of them, 
together with my friend, were- entertained at tne 
same house. At table they managed to deepen on 
each other the already strong impression of demerit ; 
so that before the meeting opened, each had sought 
occasion to say to my friend how much he was re- 
pelled by the other. One set the other down as a 
pompous, presuming fellow, of no great weight or 
sincerity. The other declared him in turn a wordy, 
vapid declaimer. But during the clay it fell to both 



26 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

of them to address the meeting, and each acquitted 
himself with so much modest}', delicacy, and ability, 
that ere they retired that night both sought out 
my friend and made haste to recall the unfavor- 
able opinion they had passed on each other in the 
morning. 

So to Protestants the Eoman Catholic religion and 
rites wear a different face from that they present to 
their own devotees ; and they appear in more repel- 
lent or engaging form accordingly as they are seen 
at their worst or at their best. In the cities and 
towns of the Northern States the Catholic population 
is distinctly marked from all others. It is foreign 
in the first place. That creates a line of separation 
and tends to excite a measure of aversion. For 
your native American looks with suspicion or with 
condescension on all who were so unfortunate to be 
born in a less favored land. Then it is a poor 
population for the most part ; and I believe poverty 
has never had the effect to commend any class to 
the esteem of their fellow-creatures. Finally it is 
uncultivated and generally very ignorant. Of course 
it has the characteristics of a poor, rude, and unedu- 
cated class in all places. It is coarse, uncleanly, 
clannish, apt to be intemperate, and supplies us with 
by far the larger part of our vicious and criminal 
classes. The sober, cleanly, mannerly, and intelli- 
gent native-born citizen enters a Roman Catholic 
church here in New England, or almost anywhere 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 27 

at the North, and he is struck unpleasantly with the 
contrast between the glitter and pomp of the altar, 
the priestly vestments and the ceremonial, and the 
poverty and rudeness of the worshippers. He ob- 
serves that the edifice is capacious, imposing, costly ; 
that expense has been lavishly laid out on the chan- 
cel and its furniture ; that money has been obtained 
from some source to pay for much costly ornament. 
He knows that not only the people who worship 
there but their brethren throughout the region are 
uniformly poor, and he feels the disparity between 
their condition, and the extravagant demands which 
a sacerdotal theory of religion makes on their humble 
resources. He says, " This cannot be acceptable to 
God. If he be that just and benevolent Being I 
have been taught to regard him, he would be much 
better pleased to see these people orderly, educated, 
thrifty, living in comfortable homes and capable of 
taking an intelligent interest in all the matters that 
concern a free citizen, though worshipping in the 
plainest and most unpretentious temples, than have 
them indulge in all this ecclesiastical display and 
ritualistic pomp, maintained in no small degree at 
the expense of their continued poverty and igno- 
rance. Roman Catholicism," he adds, as he turns 
away from the contemplation of such a spectacle, 
" is a system of antiquated ideas and useless forms, 
begotten of Mediaeval civilization and the barbaric 
love of pageants, and well calculated to retain a rude 



28 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

and credulous people in their rudeness and credulity. 
I wish the world were rid of it ; and I especially 
lament its presence and influence in Republican 
America. " 

But if he should go to reside in a Southern city, in 
Baltimore or Washington, and should enter one of the 
Catholic churches there and behold in every attitude of 
devotion the men whom he had met in the Exchange, 
at the Bar, in high official station, and in the most 
refined social circles ; if he should watch his oppor- 
tunity now to test these people, thus unexpectedly 
revealed to him as idolaters and almost pagan, by 
observing how much they know of men, of book's, 
of business, and how faithfully they discharge their 
duties in all the relations of life ; or if he were 
to pass some years abroad, mingling with the best 
society of France, Spain, German}', Italy, Austria, 
and should learn that a large share of the most cul- 
tivated and accomplished people in Europe are Ro- 
man Catholics ; that learned savans, like St. George 
Mivart and Geoffry St. Hilaire, and noble poets, and 
elegant scholars, and brilliant men of letters, are in 
this communion, while for monuments of architec- 
ture and memorials of splendid art and trophies of 
the masters of mankind he must resort largely to the 
churches, schools, libraries, and museums of the Ro- 
man Catholic hierarchy, — he would be pretty sure to 
revise his hastily formed New England judgment. 
And if he w r ere of that impressible cast of mind of 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 29 

not a few New England travellers I have known, 
apt to be affected by the appeal which venerable 
power and illustrious lineage makes to an imag- 
inative temperament, he might even return to his 
republican home disenchanted of his early affec- 
tion for the plain Puritan ritual and the homely 
bare- walled meeting-house, and more than half- 
minded to have a cathedral and a college of Jesu- 
its right here in sound of the sea that washed 
Plymouth Kock, and in sight of the protesting peak 
of Bunker Hill Monument. So wide a difference does 
it make from what point and in what company we 
approach a shrine. 

Not, however, to place our subject in any false 
light, either of ugliness or grace, let us look at it in 
clear outline, thus : The Roman Catholic Church is 
the only organization west of the Adriatic Sea and 
the Carpathian Mountains that has continuously held 
sway, either as a political or as an ecclesiastical 
power, from the institution of the original Christian 
Church in the city of Rome, in the first century, down 
to the present time. It was not, however, distinctly 
in possession of any function as a church or sect 
until some time in the third century, when the grad- 
ual growth of his influence as the representative of 
Christianity in the chief cit} T of the world gave the 
bishop of Rome the leadership, or primacy, among 
his brethren in the Church. Fj:om the acquisition of 
this recognized supremacy on the part of the bishop 



30 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

of Rome, the origin of the Roman Catholic Church 
really dates. It was afterwards claimed, in the con- 
troversy which arose about the Roman bishop's right 
to this primacy, that Christ, in the words of my text, 
founded his church on the Apostle Peter ; that Peter, 
receiving his pastoral commission from Jesus, went 
to Rome and founded the Christian Church there ; 
and that he and his successors in the original pastor- 
ate of the first church in Rome constitute an un- 
broken line of church officials from Christ down, all 
based on the original rock, and having in virtue of 
that exclusive distinction a rightful supremacy over 
all other churches. This claim was ridiculed in the 
Church at the time, and although persistently adhered 
to by the bishop of Rome and his partisans, and 
finally made the fundamental canon in the Catholic 
Church, has never been substantiated by any testi- 
mony that carried conviction, or hardly commanded 
respect, with unprejudiced historians. The bishop of 
Rome, under the style and title of Pope or Pontiff, 
exercised more or less complete sway over all the 
Western branches of the Church down to the Pro- 
testant Reformation in Germany and England. So 
much is to be recognized as a fact. Of his right to 
do any such thing there exists no evidence in any 
form, wortlw the respectful consideration of an en- 
lightened scholar. During this long period the 
Roman Church has, as a matter of course, been 
involved in nearly all the controversies, strifes, 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 31 

excesses, absurdities, corruptions, and atrocities 
that have more or less disfigured the history of the 
nations over which it has asserted authority. Not 
content with wielding spiritual supremac}', the Pon- 
tiff, in the persons of some of the more able and. 
ambitious bishops, — such as Hildebrand, or Gregory 
VII., and Paschal II. , — asserted also his temporal 
authority, and endeavored to exercise dominion over 
emperors and kings. The ability and success with 
which this preposterous claim was urged, no doubt 
added greatly to the influence and power of the Church 
for many centuries, and contributed to lengthen and 
strengthen its existence. In half the places of au- 
thority in the principal courts of Europe, ecclesiastics 
were to be found who served the Papacy with even 
more astuteness and fidelity than they attempted to 
serve the State. But a penahy the Church paid for 
its rash adventure into the stormy field of secular 
administration was the odium she incurred in the nu- 
merous bitter contests, cruel wars, and fierce retali- 
ations between different peoples and classes, in which 
her share was uniformly that of chief prosecutor. It 
ought in fairness to be remembered, however, that 
she suffers this odium for the reason, among others, 
that she lived through all that period, and is liv- 
ing still. We do not twit the dead of their share 
in crimes. 

At the present date the Eoman Catholic Church 
claims a membership of about one half of the Chris- 



32 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

tian population of the world, — or over two hundred 
millions. The allegiance of considerable numbers of 
these — sometimes including whole States — to the 
Roman Pontiff is of a very uncertain kind. But the 
organization is still as nearly a unit as any of like 
vast extent could well be, and embraces, besides the 
Pope, about sixty cardinals of all grades, two hun- 
dred archbishops, eight hundred bishops, and eighty 
vicars apostolic. These constitute the hierarchy. The 
untitled clergy number about eighty thousand. 

The distribution of this church's membership and 
authority bears out well its title to the adjective 
" Catholic," or universal. It is all-powerful in Italy 
and the Papal States, in Spain, in France, in Ireland, 
and in Austria ; is a leading denomination in Ger- 
many, Great Britain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland ; 
has a large following in Russia and in Turkey in Eu- 
rope ; has eighteen archbishoprics and thirty-eight 
bishoprics in Turkey in Asia ; is no inconsiderable 
pow T er in Persia, India, China, and the Spanish Pos- 
sessions ; has established itself with more or less of 
permanence in Australasia and Polynesia, and along 
the coast of Africa ; has fifty bishoprics in the United 
States, sixteen in Canada, eleven in Mexico, five in 
Central America, eleven in Brazil, six in Venezuela, 
and twenty-eight in the remainder of South America 
and the adjacent islands. If its pretensions are 
great, its performances are certainly commensurate 
with them. By means of its disciplined hierarchy 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 33 

and priesthood, its numerous orders and its efficient 
organization, it is able to wield all its vast and 
heterogeneous forces with more unanimity and pre- 
cision of purpose than any other institution of equal 
extent that ever existed in our world. At the same 
time its missionary zeal carries forward proselyting 
enterprises in all quarters of the globe ; and there 
is no wilderness so remote, no island so inacces- 
sible, no tribe of human beings so savage or so 
barbarous, as not to be visited by a Catholic mis- 
sionary. 

It is commonly supposed that the doctrines of the 
Eoman Catholic Church are as different from those 
of Protestants as its polity and forms are. But in 
fact they are quite similar to what is generally known 
as Orthodoxy. The fundamental tenet is belief in the 
Holy Catholic Church and in the bishop of Rome as 
the vicar or substitute of Jesus Christ on earth. 
The doctrine of the Trinity — one God in three per- 
sons — is stated by that church in almost identical 
terms with the formula adopted by Protestant Trini- 
tarian churches. It holds that the sin of Adam for- 
feited for the human family their original state of 
holiness and perfection and their inheritance of eter- 
nal blessedness. This lapse rendered necessary the 
great scheme of redemption, by which the Divine 
nature became incarnate in the person of Jesus 
Christ, who died as God-man to expiate the sin of 
our first parents and merit for us sufficient grace to 

3 



34 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

procure our salvation. Although the atonement thus 
made is sufficient for the salvation of all, all are not 
saved ; nor indeed any except those to whom Christ's 
merit is applied in the ways appointed ; namely, by 
the authority and ordinances of the Church. Baptism 
saves infants ; and that together with the other sacra- 
ments saves adults, provided they receive them with 
a suitable disposition. The doctrine of election to 
eternal glory is formally professed by the Church, 
but is quite nullified by other doctrines. Everlast- 
ing happiness is immediately attained by baptized in- 
fants, by martyrs, by adults dying immediately after 
baptism, and by all other baptized persons who die 
with perfect love of God and free from sin or guilt. 
Impenitent sinners, if unbaptized, are forever sepa- 
rated from God and suffer torments. Those who die 
guilty of trivial offences are separated from God for 
a period. Bishops and priests, as delegates of 
Christ, may forgive sins ; and what they do on earth 
is ratified in heaven. 

A modified worship is paid to the Virgin Mary, as 
the " mother of God," and greater or less reverence 
is given to eminent saints, as a recognition of their 
triumphant virtue. The Church is final authority in 
all things, as the appointed instrument of Almighty 
God for the guidance and salvation of the world. 
Therefore there is no disputing its decree, which 
when pronounced by the bishops, with their head 
the Pope, is infallible. The Scriptures are profit- 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 35 

able, but only when studied under the direction of 
a divinely authorized interpreter. 

It will be seen from this summary of doctrines — 
which, of course, omits many curious particulars — 
that the Roman Catholic Church is Orthodoxy plus 
sacerdotalism ; or, to put it the other way, Ortho- 
doxy is Roman Catholicism minus sacerdotalism. In 
the Catholic view, the Orthodox scheme of doctrines 
is very important ; but chiefly so because these doc- 
trines can be so applied through an infallible Church 
as to become the sure means of man's salvation. If 
the infallible Church were eliminated from the scheme, 
it would be as powerless as the electric fluid without 
a battery. The Bible, the creed, the act of worship, 
and even the most upright and godly life, are noth- 
ing in the account without the aid and sanction of 
that Divine instrument of grace and redemption, 
appointed of God to rectify all human aberrations 
and give efficacy to all human endeavors, — the 
infallible Church. 

It requires but slight acquaintance with the in- 
firmities of man's nature to perceive how an insti- 
tution making such extraordinary assumptions of 
authority to regulate the judgment, rule the con- 
science, and decide for time and for eternity the 
fate of men, and which, notwithstanding the high- 
sounding names of pontiff and primate and cardi- 
nal and bishop, has always and notoriously been 
administered by men of like passions, prejudices, 



36 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

and infirmities of intellect with their fellows, and 
not seldom by men of exceptional weakness and 
impiety, should inevitably run into all sorts of ex- 
travagance, folly, and unreasonableness. Nothing 
but a perpetual miracle of Divine intervention 
could save it from such excesses. It must also 
have become deeply encrusted with chronic abuses. 
And the history of the Eoman Catholic Church, as 
well as its present policies, doctrines, and cere- 
monies, affords abundant and melancholy evidence 
that what might have been expected has actually 
taken place. It presents the extraordinary spectacle, 
among the institutions of the present age, of a great 
and powerful organization, numbering hosts of able 
and highly accomplished men in its ranks, that does 
not scruple, in the face of all the intelligence within 
and without it, to pretend to abilities and func- 
tions that it does not possess, ne'ver did possess, 
and which in the nature of the case no church 
on earth can ever have. It is — as a church — 
everywhere, except among pagans and barbarians, 
the antagonist of civilization, the foe of popular 
education and popular government, and the foster- 
mother of credulity, superstition, and religious 
error. 

I do not allege that it is purposely such. I readily 
accord to its prelates and priests a fair human average 
of sincerity and high aims . I believe they are uniformly 
well-wishers of their kind, and are honestly laboring 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 37 

to promote what they believe to be the glory of 
God and the welfare of mankind. Furthermore, 
I am not blind to the peculiar merits and graces 
which the sacerdotal system, with its ambition to 
keep a long line of illustrious confessors and saints, 
has developed. I know of no sweeter piety, nor 
simpler and stronger faith, nor purer living, than I 
can find eminent examples of in the Roman Cath- 
olic Church. It has an imposing calendar of spuri- 
ous saints, as it has vast museums of spurious relics ; 
but its list of gentle and genuine saints, who have 
borne their Master's cross in their Master's spirit, is 
long enough and rich enough to endow an}~ church 
on earth. But the grave and incurable defect of this 
great and venerable hierarchy, — a defect becoming 
more apparent and more mischievous every year, — is 
its monstrous assumptions of knowledge and author- 
it}'. These are at war with reason, with the teach- 
ing of histoiy, with the convictions of enlightened 
men, and with the true progress and welfare of hu- 
man societ}'. In just so far as she is faithful to her 
assumptions, the Roman Catholic Church is the foe 
equally of the gospel of Jesus and of the peace of 
the world. She succeeds in becoming useful and 
helpful to great numbers of men, and in contrib- 
uting to advance the real Kingdom of Heaven on 
earth, only by practically discarding her theories 
and taking counsel of her Christian instincts rather 
than of her papal pretensions. 



38 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

Many people fear her dominion, especially in this 
republican country. I own that I am somewhat jeal- 
ous of her encroachments ; but the temporal power 
of the Roman Catholic Church is now hopelessly 
broken. She will never again have controlling in- 
fluence in the counsels of any European govern- 
ment. It seems incredible that she should acquire 
it here. We have to fear the effect of her unity and 
her quiet, persistent, never-remitted efforts to gain 
the objects of her desire, in those communities 
where her population is large. But even there, I 
am accustomed to think, we shall best guard 
against any usurpations or abuses she might be 
guilty of, by a course of candor, thorough impar- 
tiality, persistent use of our ample means of en- 
lightenment, and by the steady exhibition of a per- 
fectly Christian temper. 

A chief reason why the world has so often failed 
to discriminate between religious disputants, and 
has as frequently given the victory to the wrong 
party as to the right, is because it has not been able 
to distinguish any difference in the spirit by which 
the parties have been animated. Both have been 
equally rancorous and unreasonable. In such a 
situation the merits of the controversy drop out of 
sight. It is to the actors a struggle for victoiy : to 
spectators a strife of tongues. If the attempt to 
check the aggressiveness of the Roman Catholic 
Church in this country loses the character of a 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 39 

calm and candid adherence to great principles, and 
takes on the character of a heated sectarian war, 
the cause of freedom and reason will surely suffer. 
The weapons of its warfare are not carnal but 
spiritual. 



III. 

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



" These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto 
thee shortly : but if I tarry long that thou may est know 
how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, 
'which is the church of the living God, the pillar and 
ground of the truth" — 1 Tim. iii. 14, 15. 






THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 



'TPHE words taken for a text to this discourse are 
-*- a favorite quotation and motto with Episcopal 
divines, as the words chosen for the last lecture are 
a favorite proof-text with Roman Catholic writers. 
In these lectures, however, I do not enter into any 
argument either against others or in my own behalf; 
the bearing of the text on what follows is not meant, 
therefore, to be logical. It is merely a way-mark, 
showing in what company we pass the particular 
evening. 

When we think of the Episcopal Church, our minds 
by a law of association reach a little farther, and 
bring into the view the Roman Catholic Church. 
There is such a family likeness between them that 
the face of the one recalls the other. Externally 
contemplated there are points of resemblance. The 
architecture of Episcopal churches conforms closely, 
both on the outside and on the inside, to that of the 
Catholic. It is uniformly Gothic, with the symbolic 
window behind the altar, and the u Catharine wheel " 



44 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

or Rose window at the opposite end. There are the 
recessed chancel, the altar-rail, the communion-table 
within it, the pulpit on the left, the lecturn or read- 
ing-desk on the right, the robed minister, and the 
liturgical service, which are the common traits of 
both. Looking beneath externals, we discover that 
they are organized on a similar plan. The method 
of inducting individual members into the church is 
much the same in both. The ceremony of ordaining 
a minister or of consecrating a bishop is quite simi- 
lar, even to the pronouncing by the officiating bishop 
of the genuinely papal blessing : 4 c Receive the Holy 
Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the church 
of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition 
of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they 
are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost retain, they 
are retained." It was remarked in the lecture on 
the Roman Catholic Church, that its doctrinal sys- 
tem is nearly identical with that generally known 
as Orthodoxy. The same remark applies to the 
Episcopal Church, both here and in England. We 
saw, however, that the doctrines of the former church 
are greatly modified and sometimes wholly nullified 
by the theory of priestly and church authorhty. Here 
again we trace a resemblance between the Episcopal 
and Catholic churches. In spite of the letter of the 
creed and the explanations of church commenta- 
tors, it remains a fact, patent to all outside observers, 
that in the Episcopal Church regular baptism, proper 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 45 

episcopal confirmation, observance of the sacrament, 
and loyalty to the church are of so much more im- 
portance than all other things, that belief in all its 
doctrines counts for little without this loyalty ; while 
doubt is rarely or never thrown on the acceptance 
with God of any regularly inducted member of the 
church who remained faithful to its observances, 
though known to be blameworthy in life and a denier 
of the creed. That is to say, the Catholic habit of 
exalting sacerdotal and ecclesiastical authority, and 
in the last result making everything hinge on church 
connection and fidelity, seems to have descended as 
a lineal inheritance to the Episcopal body. The 
Episcopal Church does not arrogate to itself such 
extraordinary powers and functions, and does not 
lay so much stress on the saving and sanctifying 
virtue of connection with itself ; but it makes these 
things paramount, nevertheless. 

The resemblances noted lead directly to the in- 
quiry, " Whence arose the Episcopal Church?" So 
far as this countiy is concerned, the inquiry is soon 
answered. We know that the " Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the United States " grew up from the Eng- 
lish churches formed here in many of the early settle- 
ments, and provided with a bishop in 1783. But what 
was the origin of the English Church, of which the 
American is a planting? This is by no means a 
new inquiry. The Catholic Church on one side and 
the Dissenting churches on the other have let the 



46 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

light in prett} T freely on all the facts connected with 
the rise of the English Church. Besides, there are 
two parties in that church itself, as there are two in 
its representative here ; one of which claims that every 
link in the chain of succession has been verified from 
Saint Peter down to the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
The other party admits that the chain is broken in 
many places, and that some links are missing ; and 
it regards the matter as of no great importance any 
way. It is agreed on all hands, however, that as a 
distinct and independent establishment the English 
Church has no history that runs back of the last 
years of Henry VIII.'s reign, or about 1533. The at- 
tempt to trace aline of English bishops through all the 
long period when England was under the sole and un- 
disputed sway of Rome, has been about as futile as any 
ever undertaken ; and only the most inveterate stick- 
lers for the English succession now pretend to any- 
thing of the kind. And even thev content themselves 
with the assertion of it without venturing any proof 
whatever. The Roman Catholic pretence on this sub- 
ject is amazing ; the English is ridiculous, The pat- 
ent facts in the case are, that, after many symptoms 
of a disposition to break with Rome, the English peo- 
ple and Church, under the lead of that not very pious 
but very independent and able monarch, Henry VIII., 
threw off the yoke. The occasion of doing this was 
the King's wayward passion in putting away Cath- 
erine of Arragon and taking for wife Anne Boleyn, 









THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 47 

For this the Pope threatened excommunication, and 
.finally carried out his threat. But it is apparent that 
the people of England by quite a majority were ready, 
on this pretext or any other, to cut loose from a dom- 
ination that had steadily grown more exacting and 
intolerable. Henry lost no time in making such 
changes as would accustom the churches and peo- 
ple to a new order of things. It is significant how 
readily the parliament seconded his wishes and threw 
the authorhy of statute around his proceedings. He 
was proclaimed the supreme head of the English 
Church under Christ. Payments to Rome were pro- 
hibited, bulls and dispensations abolished, monas- 
teries subjected to royal and government visitation 
and exempted from all other ; and the rights hereto- 
fore assumed and exercised by the Pope and his 
legates were vested in the King. 

Here actually begins the English Church. It 
was now no longer subject to Rome ; but for 
some years no change was made in its doctrines 
or ritual, and at first it was not intended to make 
any change at all. But when it became neces- 
sary to alter the formularies so as to exclude the 
recognition of Roman authority, it was observed 
that there were other things in the ritual and con- 
fessions that savored of papal extravagance. In 
the mean time the English statesmen and prelates, 
put upon the defensive by their action in cutting loose 
from Rome, began to criticise not only papal author- 



48 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

ity and usages, but the articles of faith. The inevi- 
table result was a gradual divergence from the doc- 
trine and ritual which had hitherto and for a Ions 
period been followed. How far these divergences 
would have reached if they had not been arrested 
by the revision and adoption of an elaborate creed, 
the Thirty-nine Articles, and a book of forms and 
prayers, which fixed the faith and order of the 
English Church in a mould of unchangeable law, 
we can only guess. But our conjecture may be 
greatly aided b} T recollecting how far those branches 
of the Church that had no such mould of law have 
gone, in the direction of independence and progress. 

In this brief recital of the facts of the historical 
origin of the English and Episcopal Church, we 
learn why it is that the resemblance between it 
and the Roman Catholic Church is so strong. It 
grew out of the Roman Church, and its tendency 
away from its parent was arrested before it had 
taken on many independent peculiarities. 

I shall not speak particularly of the doctrines of 
this church, as the}' are not essentially different from 
those of other u Evangelical " churches, further than 
to remark, that, so far as my observation goes, no 
sect seems to prize so much the doctrine of the Trin- 
ity and of the Deity of Jesus. Episcopalians have 
often said to me, in substance, u We could easily 
get along with all your other heresies if you were 
not Unitarian. " I account for the pre-eminence 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 49 

given in this church to the doctrine of the Trinity, 
by the fact that more than any other Protestant 
church it leans on a certain imagined efficacy in the 
Lord's Supper, or, as it is called in that church, the 
" Sacrament of the Holy Communion." The efficacy 
arises in some mysterious way out of the circumstance 
that the emblems are a sort of typical sacrifice, not 
of a man but of God. If the Deity of Jesus were 
given up, and he were regarded as a created and sub- 
ordinate being, the sacrifice would seem to lose its 
sin and guilt cleansing character ; regarded merely 
as a memorial and a means of spiritual exaltation, it 
would appear to Episcopalians a barren and profitless 
thing. Hence the tenacity with which they cling to 
the doctrine that enables them to attribute a mystic 
efficac}' to the Communion. 

The Episcopal Church takes its name from the 
Greek word for bishop, €7ri<rK07ros, and is so distin- 
guished because the final authority resides with the 
bishops. The priests and deacons, who with the 
bishops make up the three orders of the church, are 
subject to the authority of the bishops. In this 
respect it follows the pattern of the Roman and the 
Greek churches, which are also episcopal ; though 
thej' carry the episcopate higher, having archbishops, 
patriarchs, cardinals, and in the Roman Church a 
pope. It is contended by Episcopalians that this 
three-fold order — bishops, priests, and deacons — 
was instituted by Christ and his apostles, and that 

4 



50 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

as the Roman Church has added to it by the unwar- 
rantable assumptions of the papacy, so the Puritan 
and Liberal and Independent sects have taken from 
it by discarding the episcopate, and by giving the 
laity an authority in church government and legisla- 
tion which it was never meant they should have. I 
have gone over the argument and proofs of the 
Episcopalians on this point many times and care- 
fully. I am fully impressed with their force in man}' 
particulars, but on the whole I fail to be either con- 
vinced or moved by them. Briefly stated, the theory 
and proofs run thus : Christ, whom all Christians 
recognize to be authority, "ordained" twelve apos- 
tles, and these apostles in due time ordained seven 
deacons. Now Christ, the head of the Church, is rep- 
resented by the bishop, the apostles are represented 
b} T the priests, and the order of deacons fills the 
same place as that originally assigned to this class 
of officials. Here are the three orders in the primi- 
tive church, and here they still are in the Episcopal 
Church. This is very compact, and at first sight 
might seem very conclusive. But the difficulty with 
it is, that no person would ever draw the idea of 
these orders from the accounts of the matter in the 
New Testament. It is only after an Episcopal com- 
mentator has put his meaning into it that any one is 
able to see the outline of the three orders ; and even 
then it is faint. Besides, there are no traces, or 
very dim and as it seems to me quite fanciful traces, 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 51 

of any relation between these drawing them into 
organic unity. Christ does not at all suggest to us, 
as we get our conception of him from the record, a 
modern bishop ; neither does a modern bishop very 
strongly recall Christ. The priestly functions which 
the apostles exercised were few, and wholly wanting 
in order, regularity, or apparent recognition of other 
dignitaries in the Church. In fact, if anything lies 
open on the pages of the New Testament, it is that 
in the time of Christ there was no organization 
worthy the name, nor one of which, in the case of 
civil or political society, airy jurist or statesman 
would pretend to find the record and constitution. 
If anj'thing is clear, it is, further, that in the time of 
the apostles an organization began to grow up, at 
first almost without form or coherency of parts, or 
any prescribed rule of procedure ; but which at 
length, under the exigencies of a growing company 
of believers in a common precious faith, assumed 
more definite purpose, distincter outline, and com- 
pacter form. But it requires either a strong prepos- 
session or a very active imagination to discover at 
any period during the ministry of the apostles such 
a distinctly marked and completely organized insti- 
tution as we now instantly recall when the word 
k w church " is mentioned. They had in those days a 
sort of territorial church government, which pointed 
to something more complex and complete when by 
and by the growth of Christian population should 



52 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

demand it. Such a government finally arose ; and 
even one more complex and ceremonious than the 
simple genius of the religion of Jesus called for. 
But it seems to me a species of fanatical credulity 
on the part of any one, and a painful species on 
the part of sober, educated, and critical men, to per- 
sist in believing that they find a full-fledged episco- 
pate in the very loose and shadowy outlines of a 
rude missionary machinery, extemporized piece by 
piece, as the need of it was felt, by Jesus and his 
apostles. 

A similar remark applies with respect to the claim 
of this church that there was in the apostolic days a 
liturgy. The most that can be allowed on this point 
is, that there were numerous forms of prayer used, 
and perhaps used customarily, by different persons 
and in different synagogues and churches. But a 
liturgy implies, not that I have one form and you 
another, and the third man still another ; or that this 
church has one and the other churches in the city 
have each a different one, and so for the churches 
and people generally, — but that there is one stereo- 
typed formula for all Christian people and churches. 
To amount to anything in the argument, something 
of the latter kind should be shown. But this cannot 
be, as is well known. A recent Episcopal writer, 
speaking of this subject, remarks: "-So numerous 
were the early formularies of worship, that they can 
be distributed into groups and families, genera and 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 53 

species, very much as naturalists classify animals and 
plants." x 

Still, let us not miss the exact range and bearing 
of these conclusions. An episcopate may be the 
best form of church polity, although its roots can- 
not be found in the soil of the apostolic age ; and a 
liturgy may be the most suitable and helpful form of 
worship, although there was nothing properly an- 
swering to it in those days. The true philosophy 
on these subjects appears to me to be, that the 
form of government and ritual are matters to be 
determined — like the style and constitution of civil 
society — by the demands of enlightened reason when 
applied to the circumstances. Christendom has had 
a good deal of experience under a wide variety of 
conditions. It may be that a fair result of this ex- 
perience is, that the episcopal theory is the best. I 
would not like to have the responsibility of saying, 
for all Christians, yea or nay, on this proposition. 
For myself, while I see many advantages in it, I am 
thankful for the liberty I have in this land to choose 
a different and, as it seems to me, more appropriate 
and beneficial form. I think the tendency of an epis- 
copate is to aggrandize power, extend its pretensions, 
invest itself with new prerogatives, and at the last to 
bur}' the simplicity of the gospel under a mountain 

1 Since this Lecture was written, the late Dean Stanley' s "Chris- 
tian Institutions" has appeared, in which the author takes the same 
position, supporting his view by numerous and incontestable proofs. 



54 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

of sacerdotal assumptions and ceremonial displays. 
The worst effects of this tendency may be observed 
in the Roman Catholic Church, which as to its pre- 
tensions and its pomps, so distant from both the 
letter and the spirit of the primitive gospel, is but a 
grand illustration of the excesses into which priestly 
domination is liable to run. And in the Anglican 
and the American Episcopal churches we may see 
the natural fruit of the same ecclesiastical tree. The 
high-church and the ritualistic parties, comprising a 
large and powerful element in both these bodies, are 
scarcely excelled by Rome itself in the extravagance 
of their claims and the superciliousness of their man- 
ners. Moderate and broad churchmen assure us 
that this is 'only a temporary flux in the great epis- 
copal tide, which will be surely corrected as it flows 
on. But just how it is to be corrected when these 
parties are making headway every }~ear, and are now 
nearly dominant in both countries, I suspect it puzzles 
and troubles themselves to make out. A moderate 
episcopacy, with wise and large-minded men of free 
proclivities in the bishop's office, would appear to 
me to be a not particularly objectionable thing. I 
should, at least, have as much hope of its doing 
thoroughly and progressively the great work the 
Lord has left his Church to do, as any style of ad- 
ministration that has yet been tried. 'But such an 
episcopac}' has never been known ; and if we had 
one instituted to-morrow, it would not be likely to 



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 55 

outlast the generation which saw it established. The 
tendency of the priestly office and functions is uni- 
formly to the abuse of prerogative ; and it must re- 
main so until every man of whom any one would be 
likely to make a bishop has become a statesman, 
saint, and scholar, — three natures in one person. 

The Episcopal Church has often been derided by 
the Puritan and Methodist churches, as a cold and 
formal lip-servant. I trust we are capable of a juster 
judgment. We have learned that we cannot estimate 
any man's Christian faith or worth, either by the fre- 
quency with which he reads a prayer or the volubility 
and unction with which he extemporizes it. We have 
learned to look deeper ; and we know them all, from 
the Catholic to the Quaker, by their fruits. Thus 
judged, I think the Episcopal Church, taken alto- 
gether and in every place, has no reason to be 
ashamed of its history. By means of the unity 
and coherency of its organization it has been able to 
treasure up all the results of its learning, piety, and 
benevolence ; and I think the contribution it makes 
to the good name and true fame of our common relig- 
ion is worthy its venerable origin and illustrious his- 
tory. The scholar, who has been accustomed to go 
to it for examples of high character, refined accom- 
plishments, and the most generous culture will hardly 
fail to hold it in a kind of tender respect, although he 
may be quite aware of its lapses and dangers, and 
may much prefer a simpler and freer polity for him- 



56 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

self. In recent years the Episcopal Church in the 
United States has shown an unwonted vigor in push- 
ing its lines east, west, north, and south. I look on 
while it works so systematically and effectively, and 
my feeling is, Would that every branch of the Prot- 
estant Church in America, and especially my own, 
might learn to carry forward its work with like 
method, decorum, and efficiency! 






IT. 

THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 



" Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, 
We ought to obey God rather than men." — Acts v. 29. 



THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 



\\ 7E saw, in our examination of the facts con- 
* * nectecl with the origin of the Episcopal 
Church, that it took its rise from the feeling of dis- 
content which had gradually grown up in England 
with the domination of the Pope, and which culmi- 
nated in the outbreak under Henry VIII., who set 
up for himself, not only as sovereign of England, but 
as the head of the English Church. It is every way 
fitting that we should consider next the history of 
that branch of the Church which next sprang up. 

The feeling of discontent that threw off the yoke 
of Rome was not wholly appeased by what was sub- 
stituted for it in England. The English Church for 
a long period, and to no inconsiderable extent up 
to the present time, continued in the use of most of 
the forms that had distinguished the Roman ritual. 
This was disagreeable to a considerable party, who 
finally — in the reign of Elizabeth, a daughter of 
Henry — refused to conform to many of the practices, 
— such as making the sign of the cross, kneeling to 



60 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

receive the communion, wearing the surplice, and 
the like, — and came to be known and styled u Non- 
conformists." They still recognized the authority 
and subscribed to the doctrines of the English 
Church, and attended its service ; they merely non- 
conformed to certain rites and usages. It was not 
long, however, before the idea of separation was en- 
tertained by some of those who revolted at the as- 
sumptions and customs of the church. A distinct 
community finally arose, styled at first the " Brown- 
ists," but subsequently, under lead of the famous 
John Robinson who went with them to Holland, took 
the name of Independents, and still later and in this 
country, of Congregationalists. It is now not quite 
three hundred years since this division of the great 
Christian familj 7 started out on an independent career. 
It has held a place and had something of a following 
in England ; but the great theatre of its operations 
has been the United States. Here also it has had 
imitators, in the Baptists, Universalists, Unitarians, 
and Protestant Methodists, all of which are congre- 
gational in their form of government and mode of 
worship. So that the term " congregationalists," if 
used in its original meaning to describe a church 
polity, would apply equally well to all these other 
sects. But by the law which usage finallj T estab- 
lishes, it has come to be a settled rule that the term 
" congregationalist," standing alone, shall mean a 
congregationalist of a particular theological cast. 



THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 61 

The characteristic peculiarity of the Congrega- 
tional churches is their form of government. The}' 
maintain that each congregation of Christians is 
independent of all others, and has in itself, under 
Christ, the sufficient authority to perform all the 
functions and fill all the offices known to a properly 
constituted Christian church. The Roman Catholics 
depend on the Pope for their authority ; the Episco- 
palians depend on the episcopate ; the Congrega- 
tionalists are m-dependent. They believe, however, 
in the fellowship of the churches ; and it has been 
the practice for those of the same faith and order to 
exercise a sort of fraternal watch-care over each 
other. In all cases of difficultly the counsel of other 
churches is sought, and the same aid is invoked in 
the formally- of settling or dismissing a minister. 
But although it is easy for an outsider to see that 
this long habit of leaning on the authority of a 
council of churches has acquired the force of a stat- 
ute or the authority of a bishop in other churches, 
the Congregationalists are careful to have it under- 
stood that they do not recognize any authority what- 
ever in the acts or decisions of these councils. What 
they agree in or recommend has the weight of good 
and influential advice, — that is all. It requires the 
act of the individual church to give authority. If 
the church adopts the recommendations of a council 
of churches, they become law ; not otherwise. 

In this matter of government the Congregational 



62 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

churches are in close accord with the town govern- 
ments of New England, which are undoubtedly the 
seed of our whole political organism. Congrega- 
tionalists are quice sure that their ideas of church 
polity are the source of the New England town- 
meeting, and so, not very remotely, the fountain of 
our form of political and national organization. But 
it is not entirely clear which is the model and which 
is the cop} T . Besides, our Congregational friends 
should be reminded that the analogy stops at a most 
unfortunate place for the support of their s}'stem, 
since the towns derive authority from, and are rep- 
resented in, the State legislature ; whereas, on the 
theory of Congregationalism, the churches do not 
derive authority from any source, nor have the}' any 
representative function. 

But as it is their doctrinal system which now more 
than any other thing holds the churches of this 
denomination together, and gives them a distinct 
standing-place, I turn from the consideration of their 
polity to an examination of their theology. 

There was a time — two hundred years ago — 
when nearly all the churches of this order were in 
substantial doctrinal agreement. They were Cal- 
vinists, that is, believers in the system of theology 
which that renowned theologian formulated, but 
under certain modifications, such as were given it by 
the Westminster Assembly in 1643. A hundred 
years ago this had in turn been modified by the 



THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 63 

New England theologians, and had taken form in 
the Cambridge and Say brook platforms. But through 
all modifications the}' retained the original Calvin- 
istic peculiarities, of Predestination, Particular Re- 
demption, Total Depravity, Effectual Calling, and 
Final Perseverance, — the Five Points of Calvinism. 
At that time, a hundred years ago, there was begin- 
ning to be a falling away from the stricter views of 
the Calvinists in some -quarters ; and this tendency to 
relax the old bands culminated a generation later in 
the secession of that portion of the Congregational 
churches since known as Unitarian. From that time 
all along down to this there have been two parties in 
this denomination, — the one representing the older 
and stricter school ; the other, the progressive ten- 
dencies of the body. They have never harmonized 
any too well, and latterly there are strong symptoms 
of a split. This is indicated in the increasing num- 
ber of churches that have, on one provocation and 
another, assumed independency, and in the well- 
known fact that there is a bitter feeling of antago- 
nism between the more pronounced representatives 
and journals of the two wings. In fact, it seems to 
be the mission and destiny of the Puritan branch of 
the Church to be always bearing fruit that the parent 
stock disowns. And the reason seems to be that 
in this sect were attempted to be united two most 
diverse things, — a free form of government running 
to the very extreme of the rejection of authority, with 



64 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

a dogmatic and tyrannous creed. The polity tends 
to develop individual action, independent character, 
and freedom of thought ; the theology tends to destroy 
all these. Now the result of any attempt to carry 
fire in a basket can be surely prophesied : and this 
is just the experiment the Congregational churches 
have been making. The basket never could be per- 
suaded to hold what they with such commendable 
persistency have kept putting into it. The}' should 
either have taken the fire out of their creed or put 
the iron into their government. Just look for a 
moment at the character of the dogmas the free 
genius of Congregationalism has had to struggle 
with. I will take, too, a considerably softened and 
modified statement of them : - — 

1. " That God hath chosen a certain number of 
the fallen race of Adam, in Christ, before the foun- 
dation of the world, unto eternal glory, according to 
his immutable purpose, and of his free grace and 
love, without the least foresight of faith, good works, 
or any conditions performed by the creature ; and 
that the rest of mankind he was pleased to pass b\ T , 
and ordain to dishonor and wrath, for their sins, to 
the praise of his vindictive justice. 

2. "That though the death of Christ be a most 
perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sins of infinite 
value, and abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins 
of the whole world ; and though, on this ground, the 
gospel is to be preached to all mankind incliscrimi- 



THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 65 

nately ; yet it was the will of God that Christ, b} T 
the blood of the cross, should efficaciously redeem 
those, and only those, who were from eternity elected 
to salvation and given to him by the Father. 

3. " That mankind are totally depraved in conse- 
quence of the fall of Adam, who being their public 
head, his sins involved the corruption of all his pos- 
terity ; and which corruption extends over the whole 
soul, and renders it unable to turn to God, or to do 
anything truly good, and exposes it to his righteous 
displeasure, both in this world and in that which is 
to come. 

4. " That all whom God hath predestinated to eter- 
nal life he is pleased, in his appointed time, effectu- 
ally to call by his word and spirit out of that state 
of sin and death in which they were by nature, to 
grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. 

5 . " That those whom God has effectually called 
and sanctified by his spirit, shall never finally fall 
from a state of grace ; that true believers ma} T fall 
partially, and would fall totally and finally, but for 
the mercy and faithfulness of God, who helpeth the 
feet of his saints." 

Add to these the doctrine of the Trinity, and the 
explanation of the substitution of Christ — who was 
very God of very God — in the room of the sinner, 
and the unrejected teaching of Calvin that the happi- 
ness of the righteous and the misery of the impeni- 
tent begin directly at death, and are endless, — and 

5 



66 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

you get a faint notion of the strain put by the creed 
on the simple and loosely compacted framework of or- 
ganization in which it was encased. With the freedom 
which all the members and every particular church 
enjoyed, to restate, modify, interpret, or reject alto- 
gether the creed, and in the absence of any stereo- 
typed ritual to draw the churches into uniformity of 
services, and with the incentive to free inquiry exist- 
ing in the very atmosphere of our republican society, 
it was inevitable that a large measure of individuality 
should develop ; that while some would consider them- 
selves set for the defence of the old form of faith, 
others would be driven to criticise and revise it ; that 
some churches would reconstruct one article of the 
creed and some another ; and that by these means 
there should finally result an amount of diversity and 
independence quite impossible to include under one 
administration. And the Congregational body is to- 
day a complete fulfilment of this prophecy. It is no 
more coherent and no better agreed in doctrines and 
policies than the Unitarian body, w r hich by common 
consent enjoys the reputation of being the last and 
lamentable outcome of the Congregational S3'stem. 

The wonder is, not that the order is so much broken 
up, but that it has so well held together. There have 
been two causes contributing to bind the churches of 
this denomination in unity, notwithstanding the seeds 
of division and disruption which they have carried in 
their own constitution. The first is found in the fact 



THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 67 

that the Calvinistic sj'stem starts so many serious and 
intricate questions that the explanation and defence of 
its several propositions calls into vigorous pla} T those 
qualities of the intellect which have ever been most 
venerated and admired among Anglo-Saxons, — the 
powers of induction and analysis. We observe the 
bent of the popular judgment in this particular in the 
homage uniformly paid to a great lawyer or jurist. 
He deals with a vast mass of intricate rules, estab- 
lished often upon principles diametrically opposed to 
each other, and related by the most technical and ob- 
scure threads <of precedent. Now the ordinary mind, 
untrained in the habit of steering safety through such 
a crowd of complexities, is utterly overwhelmed b\- 
the mere thought of the subject ; and when a feeble 
or unversed or half-bewildered advocate essays the 
task, they are more than ever convinced that the law 
is inscrutable. But when a man appears who can 
run the gantlet of all the subtleties and come out in 
a clear place, who fits together, by dextrous logical 
art, rules that have no apparent relationship, and 
who, conscious that he has no resource but to 2:0 bv 

' C ty 

the law however far removed from reason and equity 
that may be, ingeniously contrives to make it wear 
the benign face of unimpeachable wisdom and unerr- 
ing justice, the public respect for his abilities rises 
into a sort of worship. 

Now the common mind was as utterly bewildered 
by the contradictory and irrational propositions of 



68 WALKS ABOUT Z10N. 

Calvinism as was Mr. Samuel Lawson when he went 
to hear Dr. Stearns preach. 1 But when they heard 
learned and evidently consecrated men expound these 
mysteries, and by help of that never-failing accomplice 
of all error, a train of reasoning, make sense out of 
nonsense, goodness out of badness, and justify the 
ways of God, so dark and awful to the common intel- 
ligence, by showing how good it was in him to refrain 
from sending the whole batch to perdition, where 
they clearly demonstrated every mortal belonged, — 
they were ready, although the steps were still blind to 
them, to applaud the skill and accept the conclusions 
of their logic- weaving divines. You can trace the 
effect of this state of mind in the whole history of 
Congregationalism in America, in the literature and 
conversations of the people, and in the unyielding 
convictions of not a few of the church metaphysi- 
cians of the day. It served to develop, too, a long 
and able line of casuists, who gave celebrity to the 
Congregational name, and thus made it difficult for 
any member of that religious family to desert his 
own honored house. 

Another thing that served to keep up the unity of 
the order was the rules early adopted and long faith- 
fully adhered to, until they acquired all the force of 
a statute, in the examination and admission of mem- 
bers, and in examining and settling' pastors. By 
these means a rigid standard of orthodoxy was 

1 See Mrs. H. B. Stowe's " Oldtown Folks," chapter xxix. 



THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 69 

raised and kept constantly before the mind of every 
minister, church, and individual member. He might 
know well enough that there was no authority to 
make him bow to this standard ; but the fear of in- 
curring the odium of unsoundness, or of wanting the 
requisite evidences of election, overcame all other 
considerations, and impelled each candidate to vie 
for the reputation of unwavering orthodoxy. Being 
largely in the majority in all the New England towns, 
they made this sentiment pervade the ranks of society 
and even the halls of state quite as potently as the 
church itself. And to these causes our Congrega- 
tional brethren owe their ability to maintain them- 
selves in the vigor of their doctrinal ascendency for 
so long a period, quite as much, to say the least, as 
to all others combined. 

Yet it is to be acknowledged that the Orthodox 
Congregational churches were never so numerous 
nor so popular nor so influential as they are to-day. 
They are not a unit in doctrine nor in usage, as they 
were once. They do not abide in the ancient faith, 
but are to-da}^ much nearer the Universalists and 
Unitarians than they are to their former selves. 
Yet, individualized and unorthodox though the}' are, 
thev flourish well. No sect embraces so much cul- 
ture, wealth, and character throughout New England 
as the Congregational. It has established itself 
in considerable strength in all the large centres of 
the Middle and Western States, and its home and 



70 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

foreign missionar}' operations, its educational and 
charitable work, give it a first rank among the great 
denominations of Christendom. I know personally 
a large number of its clergymen and authors, and 
it affords me a genuine pleasure to testify to their 
uniform high character. I see in the Congregational 
denomination the actual processes of that great and 
beneficent religious revolution which I am sure is 
destined ultimately to take place in the whole circle 
of evangelical churches. They were all originally 
on common orthodox ground. Some by virtue of 
close and compact organization, or by the repressing 
force of an unchanging church law, linger yet in the 
mere twilight of the new and better day. But this 
denomination, once the severest of all in its mainten- 
ance of the awful dogmas of Augustine and Calvin, 
has been so leavened by the free influences of its 
system of government that it has outstripped ihem 
all in its progress toward a rational faith. 

I know what is still written in the creeds of many 
Congregational churches, and how recently a solemn 
conclave of their ministers went through the for- 
mality of reaffirming the ancient doctrines. But I 
know also the membership of these churches, I am 
acquainted with the style and character of the preach- 
ing the\r maintain and most enjo} r , and I have long 
been familiar with every department of their current 
literature. I know, therefore, that as a people they 
have left Egypt and are far on their way to the 



THE CONGREGATIONAL BODY. 71 

promised land. Where they will bring up I do not 
know, and the} T do not know. They have no definite 
goal. The future is all before them, and the logic 
of events is compelling them to move along, but to 
what ending no one can guess. I should not be 
surprised if another century saw them many times 
divided, and perhaps broken up into utter indepen- 
dency. For a sect that has outgrown its ancient 
creed and begun the dangerous process of moving 
away to more tenable ground, without having any 
distinct point of rest, is apt to keep on until there 
is no halting-place for it. The straiter members of 
the sect may, perhaps, sa} T the} T still believe in the 
Catechism, and may affect to hold fast to that. The 
larger and more liberal portion know that they do 
not believe in the Catechism. At the same time 
they do not believe with the Unitarians or Universa- 
lists in doctrine, nor with the Episcopalians in polity. 
They are adrift. Their literature, their sermons, 
their conversations, and their half-and-half eccle- 
siastical policies show that they do not know w r here 
they are. 

I presume, however, they have no anxiety for 
themselves, and it would clearly be impertinent in 
me to have anxiety for them. They have done 
much to foster learning, art, science, and good gov- 
ernment, and not a little to deepen the religious 
sense of all our communities. They will continue 
to do these and other good works, I doubt not. 



72 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

They will erelong have eliminated by a process of 
explanation and accommodation the orthodox ele- 
ments from their theology ; and it will be an inter- 
esting inquiry what their system of doctrines will 
then be. 






Y. 

THE METHODISTS. 



u The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special 
people" — Deut. vii. 6. 



THE METHODISTS. 



'THHE sect of Christians with whom we pass this 
-*- evening are emphatically a peculiar people. 
Whether we can go on to fill out the description as 
drawn by Saint Peter, by adding, " zealous of good 
works," ma}' not be within my province to say. 

It is a curious fact that in a state of society like 
ours here in America, where so large a proportion 
springs from a common stock, where all are acted 
on by the same influences of climate, education, 
laws, and customs, there should arise so many di- 
verse, and one might almost say distinct, types of 
intellectual, social, and religious character. The 
Creator's love of diversity in particulars is not less 
strongly attested in his creation and providence, 
than his love of unity in generals. Viewed astrono- 
mically, the earth is one huge mass of matter ; but 
viewed as a resident on it or an explorer into it 
must make its acquaintance, it is a vast and at first 
sight bewildering accumulation of substances, objects, 
and products. Every family is a social unit. Yet 



76 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

the different members illustrate wide degrees of 
variation. So an American is, when met in some 
other land and among another people, so distinctly 
marked that shrewd observers rarely mistake him, 
however disguised. And from such a circumstance 
one would infer a uniformity of physical and social 
traits among Americans, such as we assume among 
the Chinese. But here at home we are, on the other 
hand, struck with the diversities among our people. 
In New England we quickly recognize a New Yorker, 
an Ohioan, a Western or a Southern man. And in 
those sections they pick out a New Englander, and 
even a Bostonian, almost before he speaks. 

The same rule of orders and types might be traced 
in the intellectual and social gradations of our peo- 
ple, even in the same city or neighborhood. But it 
is rather remarkable how these differing types ma}' 
be observed in the religious classification of the 
people, especially since we have churches of all the 
principal sects in every large town, and very gen- 
erally they are made up of members from all the 
sections of the town, all the ranks of its society, and 
often the same family is represented in several differ- 
ent churches. Yet we note a more or less charac- 
teristic difference between the congregations of the 
several churches. They are persons of different 
style, taste, ideas, and tendencies. An Episcopa- 
lian is apt to have about him a certain consciousness 
of the merit that flows down from an ancient and 



THE METHODISTS. 77 

apostolic fountain. As to the Congregation alist, his 
Episcopal neighbor may quite outdo him in ecclesi- 
astical airs, but nobody can be better aware that it 
is respectable to be Orthodox. The Presb3 T terian is 
only a more severe and mournful Congregationalism 
The Baptist is likely to take kindly to Methodist 
practices, while he holds in aversion the Methodist 
theories. The Swedenborgian looks down on the 
whole company of striving sects from a serene height 
of undoubting superior knowledge and penetration. 
The Unitarian can with difficulty repress the con- 
viction that Harvard College is the New Jerusalem, 
and culture the true Messiah. The Universalist is 
about equally distinguished for his theoretical ecstasy 
over the joys of the world to come and his practical 
affection for the comforts of this present world. 

Now something of the hue which marks the indi- 
vidual members of each sect spreads itself over and 
gives a certain well-defined cast of thought, or pecu- 
liarity of administration, to the whole bocty. And 
so the Methodist Church is separated from the other 
churches, not onty by its special doctrines and polity, 
but to the popular eye by its family traits. 

I recall vividly my first attendance upon a Metho- 
dist meeting. I was a lad of about ten years. In 
the neighborhood where I then lived there was no 
Baptist church, — the church I was brought up in, — 
nor any Methodist church. There were, however, 
some families of both denominations in that section, 



78 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

and each party was anxious to lay the foundation for 
a future church of its own order. Their mutual weak- 
ness rendered them mutually conciliatory y though I 
have the best of reasons for knowing that they held 
each other's doctrines in derision. It was finally 
arranged that the district schoolhouse should be 
opened for the use of each on alternate Sundays ; 
and stimulated by the desire of seeing the house 
filled for their own minister, each party turned out in 
fall force to hear the other. It was in the custoety 
of two devout Baptists, one of them nry aunt, that I 
went to this schoolhouse to attend my first Methodist 
meeting. I had heard much about the Methodists 
in fireside discussions, and was curiously eager to 
look upon a real Methodist preacher. I remember 
that the one who officiated on this occasion was a 
much more clerical-looking man than I had ever 
seen in any Baptist pulpit. Coming briskly in he 
went up on the little raised platform at the end of 
the room, where the "master" was accustomed to 
sit and rule the noisy urchins, of whom I was one, 
and knelt down for a moment. This unusual act 
inspired me with awe. Then he gave out a hymn 
which was sung, himself leading in a mighty voice, 
with an energy and freedom that almost appalled 
me. Rapidly followed the brief Scripture reading 
and the long, loud prayer, which was scarcely well 
under way before quick responses of "Amen!" 
"Yes, Lord!" "Praise God!" and the like began 



THE METHODISTS. 79 

to rise from the benches where the Methodist por- 
tion of the congregation were kneeling. I noticed 
that as the responses increased in number the prayer 
grew in volume and in rapidity of utterance, until 
towards the close there was such a tumult of suppli- 
cation and ejaculation that in breathless amazement 
I turned to the face of my aunt to see how she was 
affected b t y it all, and possibly to draw from her ex- 
pressive face an augury of its meaning. Her eyes 
were turned resolutely on the floor, but her face 
wore the severe aspect of disapproval which I had 
learned so well to read. I recall nothing of the 
sermon, except that the preacher appeared to be 
very " tonguey " as some members of the congrega- 
tion said, that he pounded the Bible and the desk 
violently at times, and that he seemed to be preach- 
ing for ears far away. 

Since that day I have made the acquaintance of 
my Methodist brethren in many different places and 
under great variations of social position and culture. 
I have found them much modified, of course, by 
these circumstances. But I have never failed to 
detect in them the same characteristic traits which 
impressed me with so much distinctness the first 
time I went to their meetings. No matter how 
learned, or wealthy, or dignified they become, our 
Methodist friends are relatively more boisterous, 
enthusiastic, and familiar, both with God and men, 
than any other people. It takes less to warm them 



80 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

up and evoke their religious ecstasy than any other 
class. They are, apparently, more zealous, have a 
greater "concern for souls," and are capable of a 
larger outla}' of physical exertion in behalf of their 
cause than an}' other sect. These peculiarities dis- 
tinguish thern in the East as well as in the West, in 
the North quite as much as in the South, in old Eng- 
land no less than in new America. On account of it 
they are the most contagious sect among the " com- 
mon" people, and have the largest following among 
the comparatively unlettered. They will thrive where 
the Congregationalists can gain no footing ; and their 
only formidable rival in the rural districts and in the 
country generally is the Baptist denomination, which, 
for different reasons, appeals to much the same classes. 
When we look into the articles of faith of the 
Methodist Church we discern some marked differ- 
ences from what we find in the creeds of the Con- 
gregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Lutheran 
churches. The one grand point of distinction, how- 
ever, is the emphatic rejection by the Methodists of 
the Calvinistic dogma of election and predestination. 
The great battle on that point was fought out by the 
two parties among the Methodists in the first 3-ears 
of their existence. Wesley was the leader of the 
' ' free-grace " party and Whitefield of the election 
party. The victory fell to Wesley,- who in con- 
sequence became the real head of the Methodist 
Church. I look upon the rejection of this dogma 



THE METHODISTS. 81 

by the Methodist Church as a providential advance 
from the old dead-line of rigorous and repressive 
Orthodoxy, to the new and more rational position 
of the modern Broad and Liberal church parties. 
It was one step, and an important one, towards 
what Matthew Arnold names u sweetness and light." 
It seems to be out of the question for any large por- 
tion of mankind to move at once from a lower to a 
very much higher level, or from an untenable to a 
consistent and entirely tenable position. A few 
avant couriers will go well forward and pitch their 
camp on the free heights. But it is useless to invite 
or adjure the whole army to take up that position. 
You maj' induce a division or a detachment to break 
camp and start for a new field ; but it must not be 
too far removed from the old grounds. Slowly, and 
by squads, the great human army advances. It was 
impossible to bring Wesley over to the ground taken 
by Kelly and Murraj' a little more than a hundred 
years ago. Or, if he had gone, he would, like them, 
have advanced beyond the sympatlry and following 
of the great mass of his people. But he took one 
step on the road ; and the interest and enthusiasm of 
many then, and multitudes since, went so far with 
him. 

I have said there is a quite noticeable doctrinal 
difference between the Methodist Church and certain 
other churches, usually distinguished as Calvinistic. 
But I presume my hearers will saj' that so far as 

6 



82 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

their observation goes there is no marked difference 
between Methodist preaching and Congregationalist 
or Baptist preaching, on the point of election. In 
fact, they will say, election is a matter of which they 
hear very little in any of these churches. This is, I 
believe, quite true, and paves the way for the remark, 
that the Calvinistic churches very generally have in 
our day practically advanced to the " free-grace " 
ground of the Methodists. In common with them 
they now teach — although it is not often so written 
in their creeds — that abundant provision has been 
made by the sacrifice of Christ for the salvation of 
all ; and that the only limit to the acceptance and 
enjo}'ment of this provision is the willingness of the 
sinner himself to come and take it. The former 
rigid line of separation between a certain share of 
mankind held to be elected, and another share as- 
sumed to be reprobated, is now very rarely drawn 
in any of the so-called Orthodox churches. On the 
other hand, great pains appear to be taken to conceal 
the fact that any such line exists. So that to-day 
the differences between the Methodists and the other 
sects of the ' c Evangelical group" are differences 
of polity and of social and family traits rather than 
of dogmatic belief. It is somewhat with these tw r o 
parties in the Evangelical circle as it is with the 
Unitarians and Universalists in the Liberal commu- 
nion. Time was when there was a quite marked 
difference of faith ; now they stand substantially 



THE METHODISTS. 83 

together as to the substance of their belief. Bat 
there is yet so strong a family unlikeness in the 
two that it is not much easier to make them affiliate 
in the same organization than formerly. 

The history of the rise of Methodism is exceed- 
ingly interesting. John Wesley was the founder of 
the sect. He was born in Lincolnshire, England, 
in 1703, and died in London in 1791. He was reared 
and educated in the English Church, and finally 
became a clergyman of that communion. But from 
his youth he betrayed a fondness for the pietistic 
ways of some of the sects outside, such as the Mora- 
vian ; and very early in life he, with a number of 
fellow-students and others, came to be classed as 
Methodists, in allusion to the extra strictness of their 
life and the regulated devoutness of their religious 
practice. As a clergyman he was ill at ease in the 
Establishment, longing for freer forms and more 
spontaneous worship. He indulged himself in his 
bent in this direction until his ministry became dis- 
tasteful to churchmen generally, and he was driven 
out, or perhaps I should say crowded out, though 
never excommunicated. He with his followers held 
meetings in an old and discarded foundery in Moors- 
fields, and here he organized a little church, the first 
seed of the great Methodist denomination, in 1740. 
Wesley did not, however, intend founding a new sect. 
He still belonged and tried to be lo} T al to the English 



84 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

Church. On his dying bed he adjured his followers 
to be faithful to that communion. But events were 
too mighty for him or them. The whole tenor and 
spirit of the movement he had originated was con- 
trary to the traditions and tendencies of the Estab- 
lishment. In spite of themselves the Methodists 
grew into a distinct bocly. America then even more 
than now offered an inviting field for all new relig- 
ious movements. Hither came lay preachers under 
the auspices of Wesley, and introduced the style of 
exhortation and worship that had already taken such 
hold of the common people in England. Hither also 
came that great competitor of Wesley for the leader- 
ship of the new movement, the marvellously eloquent 
Whitefield. And hither, although himself no bishop, 
Wesley sent Thomas Coke for bishop, having first 
assisted with other clergymen to ordain him to that 
office, that the societies rapidly forming in the new 
world might have the care of an officer of rank and 
authority. 

On Christmas day, 1784, the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, as a distinct religious organization, no longer 
leaning on the Church of England or on the Episco- 
pal Church in America, was organized in Baltimore. 
Methodist societies were already quite numerous, but 
now the Methodist Church assumed its place in relig- 
ious history. Dr. Coke was recognized by the Balti- 
more Conference of 1784 as their bishop, and Francis 
Asbury was by him ordained as his assistant in the 



THE METHODISTS. 85 

office. The organization then formed and still ad- 
hered to was modelled on that of the English and 
Episcopal Church, having bishops, deacons, and eld- 
ers. Subsequently the order of deacons was found 
to be unnecessary, and was discarded. The Meth- 
odist Church has for its chief officer in each Confer- 
ence — or diocese, as the Episcopal Church would 
name it — a bishop, whose business it is to look after 
the interests of the church within that limit. Each 
Conference meets annually, and was until very re- 
cently composed entirely of clergymen, under the 
names of travelling preachers, deacons, and elders, 
but has now also a representation of laymen from the 
different churches. Subordinate to the bishops but 
superior to the pastors are the presiding elders, who 
have each the care of certain districts. Once in four 
years the General Conference meets, which is the high- 
est authority in the church, and legislates for it like 
a national congress. This bod}' is composed of the 
bishops and of delegates from the Annual Confer- 
ences. 

The plan gradually shaping itself in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church is, to have the authority vested in 
a body partly official and partly representative,— 
the Quadrennial Conference ; to have as subordinate 
working bodies the Annual Conferences under the 
supervision of a bishop ; to have still smaller dis- 
tricts under the care of a sub-bishop, or presiding 
elder; and to have an itinerant or transient min- 



86 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

is try, appointed by the Conferences and holding 
their pastorates not longer than three years. I 
am inclined to think that this plan of organiza- 
tion, adapting itself to the church idea on the one 
hand and to the genius of representative government 
on the other, is the most suitable to our country and 
to the requirements of an American population. It 
has certainly proved in the hands of the Methodists 
a wonderfully practical and effective mode of adminis- 
tering the interests of the church. By it every re- 
quirement seems to be met ; there is some one to look 
after all the interests and keep every wheel in the 
great mechanism in motion. By it all the material 
is utilized. If there are — as there are — men in the 
ministry who on account of personal peculiarities or 
lack of mental furnishing would be unable to secure 
settlements or to hold them when secured, they are 
not left to drift about aimless and comparatively use- 
less as in so man} 7 other churches. But a place is 
found for them where they can fill a corporaFs if not a 
lieutenant's position while the battle goes on, and thus 
keep the whole army officered and in action. If differ- 
ences or difficulties arise, there is some one to come 
in by authority, and without bias adjust the matter. 
And w T hat is much better, all parties, from the high- 
est to the lowest, know just where they are and what 
they have to do, and to what issue all' their efforts 
conduct. 

While I do not greatly sympathize with most of the 



THE METHODISTS. 87 

doctrines affirmed by this church ; while their family 
peculiarities are more distasteful to me than those of 
any other Protestant sect ; while I conceive them to be 
better adapted to some grades of culture and some 
regions of countiy than to others ; and while I am 
often shocked if not offended by a certain disagree- 
able mixture of cant and coquetry in this people, a 
union of saint and jockey, — I stand in awe before the 
magnitude of their work. I am filled with admiration 
of the almost uniform high executive ability of their 
bishops, who have as good a title to be called church 
statesmen as anj T that have arisen in Christian histoiy ; 
and I am not prepared to cast any slight on a body 
of men, however deficient according to my standards, 
who are so uniformly true to the great interests of 
social morality and personal righteousness as the 
Methodist clergy. They have become a great power 
in American civilization, and it is not a power that 
any good citizen has reasons to fear. Wherever 
Methodism prevails, it will foster the love of liberty, 
the practice of temperance, and the purity of the 
home. And it is not the least of its merits that it has 
the capacity to do this with a class of our population 
that most needs the cultivation of these great funda- 
mentals of civilized existence. 



VI. 

THE BAPTISTS. 



" Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and 
all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of 
him in Jordan, confessing their sins." — Matt. iii. 5, 6. 



THE BAPTISTS 



OPENDING- an evening with the Baptists is to 
^ me much like paying a visit to the ancestral 
home. In doing so I return to the scenes and revive 
the memories of my childhood. I come of Baptist 
stock. An ancestor of mine, a Baptist minister, 
bearing the same name, was imprisoned with ten or 
twelve others in Hartford jail, in the Commonwealth 
of Connecticut, for the offence of preaching the gos- 
pel contrary to statute. M} T father's grandfathers 
were both Baptist clergymen. Among a wide circle 
of relatives whom I saw up to my fourteenth year, 
there was but one who had ventured into an} r other 
than the Baptist fold : and I remember he was looked 
upon almost in the light of a traitor. I was the first 
one of the direct line, and almost the first one of any 
of the branches, to wander far slwslj from the fold of 
my fathers. 

In attempting to speak of the Baptists, after more 
than twenty years of separation from them, I am 
affected somewhat as I should be if called on to talk 
freely of my own ancestry and my paternal home. 



92 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

I feel that I know them more thoroughly, and under- 
stand both their spirit and their aims better, than 
I do any other people, with the single exception of 
those into whose fellowship I have been adopted. 
But on that very account I am embarrassed. There 
seems a certain betrayal of confidence in telling all 
you know of a family at whose fireside you were 
nourished and brought up, and in whose sanctuary 
you have enjoyed hallowed hours of delight. I recall, 
too, the faces and tones, and not a few of the words, 
of able and venerable men, mighty in the Scriptures, 
from whose powerful appeals my life caught some- 
thing of its higher impulse, and to whose cogent 
presentation of Divine truth I am still largely a 
debtor. I walk, therefore, with a kind of reverence 
around the altar of this people, as it were a shrine 
of my fathers, sacred also in my own memory. 

The Baptist denomination is the second 1 in size 
and in popular importance among the Protestant 
sects of the United States. It is also a large branch 
of the dissenting population of England, and has a 
considerable distribution in Scotland and Wales. 
On the continent of Europe there are about thirty 
thousand Baptists, found mostly in Germany and 
Sweden. They have large missions and a large 
aggregate membership in Australia,- Africa, India, 

i This is now a disputed point. It is probable the Baptist family 
is quite as large as the Methodist. 



THE BAPTISTS. 93 

and on the principal islands of the Eastern and West- 
ern hemispheres. They are a remarkable people for 
their adaptation to different ranks and regions and 
races. They are a great power in London, having 
nearly one hundred and fifty churches there. They are 
strong in Boston and in Baltimore, in Montreal and 
in Chicago, in Eichmoncl and in New York, in San 
Francisco and in Philadelphia. You will find- them 
scattered through the country towns from one end of 
the land to the other, appearing to flourish equally 
well in Maine and in North Carolina, in Illinois and 
in Texas. They have more churches and members 
among the colored people of the South than any 
other sect. They have ministers of the most illiter- 
ate and primitive character, and the}' have those of 
the highest culture and accomplishments. In some 
sections the Baptist preachers pour contempt on 
college training, and pride themselves on their ability 
to preach without the aid of "book learning." .In 
others they are the foremost apostles of education. 
You will find Baptist congregations that can scarcely 
be matched for antiquated costumes and customs, 
manners and ideas ; and you will find those that 
are not excelled for style, polish, and progress. In 
fine, they fulfil admirably the spirit of the apostle's 
ambition in their ability to become all things to all 
men, and thereby make their way into all regions 
and maintain themselves among all classes. 

There are some nine distinct varieties of Baptists : 



94 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

The Seventh-Day, the Sixth-Principle, the Disciples 
or Campbellites, the Winebrennerians, the Christians, 
the Dunkers, the Anti-mission Baptists, the Free- 
will, and the Regular, called in England " Particu- 
lar " Baptists. They agree in the mode of baptism, 
but differ in the method of construing the impor- 
tance of the rite, or in other matters of doctrine. 
The Free-will, for example, are Arminians, while the 
Regular Baptists are Calvinists. The latter are far 
more numerous than all the others combined, and 
are the people with whose peculiar ideas and rites 
and work we are most concerned. 

The doctrine that distinguishes the Baptists among 
sects is that relating to the ordinance of baptism. 
They hold, not only that there is no proper mode of 
baptism except by immersion, but that anything else 
is not baptism at all. Whoever has not been im- 
mersed has not been baptized, no matter in what 
church or under the hand of how high a dignitary. 
To sprinkle a candidate, or to pour water upon him, 
and call that baptism, is in their opinion as far 
short of the requirement as it would be to wash the 
hands and call that laving the body in pure water, 
or announcing the title of a discourse and then 
claiming to have preached it. Do they then, the 
unbiased hearer quickly asks, consider the rite of 
baptism a regenerating ordinance, as. do the Roman 
Catholics, or essential to any one's salvation, that 
they are so scrupulous about the form? It would 



THE BAPTISTS. 95 

seem as if the} 7 must consider it so, or they would, 
in common with most other Protestant sects, allow 
this rite to take a subordinate place in the means 
of grace. 

By no means. Baptists are much annoyed to he 
so misjudged. They consider baptism an outward 
symbol of an inward spiritual experience ; and no 
Christian sect is quite so particular to demand of the 
candidate for admission to church membership evi- 
dence of what they call "experimental piety" and 
personal regeneration, as the Baptist. This is, in 
theory, the indispensable prerequisite to the adminis- 
tration of baptism. So that they cannot hold to the 
saving efficacy of the ordinance. But this is their 
position : Baptism is the one initiatory rite of Chris- 
tianity. It is the appointed door of entrance into 
the Christian Church. Believe and be baptized is 
the uniform requirement of Jesus and his apostles. 
It is not enough to believe only ; it is not enough 
to be baptized without belief. It is demanded that 
we believe and be baptized. If this be the rule of 
Jesus and his apostles, it would seem to be the 
proper and necessaiy rule. If it ma} 7 be deviated 
from, who will tell how much and how far? Obvi- 
ously there can be no centre of union and no uni- 
formity of fellowship, except by faithful adherence to 
the rule of the Master. 

If the Pedo-baptists reply : " We also accept and 
follow the Saviour's rule. We make belief the pre- 



96 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

requisite of baptism, and we hold that no one is in full 
and regular communion until he has both believed and 
been baptized," the Baptist rejoins : " True enough ; 
and by that admission and by your usage, you endorse 
the Baptist position. But your error is, that you name 
that baptism which is no baptism. Your philosophy 
is all right, being substantially ours. Now conform 
your practice to it, by demanding genuine baptism, — 
that is, immersion, — and you will stand just where 
we do." 

The " regular " Baptists in the United States have 
always stood firmly by what they consider a logical con- 
sequence of their doctrine of baptism ; namely, that they 
cannot admit to their communion-table, nor go to the 
communion-table with, those who have not been bap- 
tized, — that is, immersed. They may esteem them 
very highly, and may not deny that they are sincere 
and useful Christians. But in their view they are 
not true church members, and so not entitled to par- 
ticipate in that ordinance for which they suppose bap- 
tism to be the indispensable qualification. In this 
respect again, they contend that they take no differ- 
ent ground from other u evangelical " churches, — the 
Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and 
Episcopalians. These denominations have from the 
beginning been accustomed to invite to the commun- 
ion-table " members of other churches in good and 
regular standing," — that is, persons properly in 
church fellowship according to their ideas of it ; and 



THE BAPTISTS. 97 

that has always included, and only included, baptized 
persons, according to their notion of baptism. They 
no more than the Baptists welcome to their table 
persons not baptized. But they allow that persons 
sprinkled or affused have been baptized. This the 
Baptist cannot allow ; and so he treats all those who 
have not submitted to the proper rite as the Presb}'- 
terian or Congregationalist treats those who have 
submitted to no rite. And he says, "I am not a 
whit more i close ' or exclusive in doing so than 
they are. We stand on precisely the same logical 
ground." 

It is, I think, in fairness to the Baptists to be ad- 
mitted that the force of this home argument has 
been quite keenly felt by the other " evangelical" 
churches, and under the influence of the discomfort 
it has occasioned there has arisen among them a 
disposition, now quite often yielded to, to extend the 
grounds of fellowship. And we now frequently hear 
in these churches the invitation to the Lord's Supper 
in these broad terms : 6 ' We invite all members of 
other Christian churches, and all who love our Lord 
Jesus Christ in sincerity, to participate with us in this 
commemoration of our Lord." By taking this ground 
they escape the logical dilemma in which it has been 
the habit of the Baptists to involve them. 

On the other hand, the Baptists of England now 
almost universally practise what is known as ' ' open 
communion." That is, they hold to the duty of 

7 



98 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

Christians to be immersed, as the only proper 
mode of baptism and of entrance into the Chris- 
tian Church ; and to the extent of their example 
and authority they practise this rule. But they 
decline to make their conscience the criterion for 
other Christians, bv excluding them from their 
communion-table. The}^ invite Methodists, Epis- 
copalians, Presbyterians, and accept their invita- 
tions in turn, the same as Baptists. Here in 
America, also, the Baptists are feeling the inevita- 
ble effect of the now general tendency to discard 
as unjustifiable and puerile all attempts to erect a 
confessedly subordinate matter of form into a para- 
mount matter of principle. The open-communion 
heres} 7 is making its appearance in all quarters of 
the denomination. Able and influential preachers 
advocate and practise it, and the time cannot be far 
awa}^ when restricted communion must no longer be 
made a test of Baptist orthodoxy. 

The considerations leading the minds of the Bap- 
tist people to this conclusion are the same that have 
controlled other Christians in reaching the like ground 
before them. In the first place, it appears the more 
improbable the more it is scrutinized, that John the 
Baptist or Jesus meant to institute a rigid and in- 
variable mode of admission to the Christian Church. 
It seems obvious that the original kitent of the rite 
of baptism was, besides symbolizing the individual's 
change from the old to the new, as b\ T a washing from 



THE BAPTISTS. 99 

dead works and sin, to commit him, by an act done 
openly and in the presence of all men, to the Chris- 
tian cause. It was a public rite of initiation adopted 
from John the baptizer's practice w T ith his converts, 
by the early preachers of Christianity. I think the 
weight of evidence goes decidedly to show that the 
mode originally practised in that country of lustra- 
tions, or frequent washings of the whole body in 
streams and pools and baths, was to immerse the 
whole person under the water. But as its purpose 
was to seal in an open and unmistakable manner 
the individual's disciple ship, it seems entirely ra- 
tional to conclude that any other form of adminis- 
tering it, equally suitable to that end, which the 
difference of climate or customs, or the conveni- 
ence of the people might demand, would just as 
well serve the purpose, and just as fully meet the 
demands of that gospel whose great peculiarity it is 
not to follow the letter that kilieth so much as to 
keep the spirit that giveth life. Accordingly it has 
come to pass, as Christianity advanced northward 
and westward into colder climes, and as freedom 
from the bondage of a stereotyped custom has 
gradually asserted itself in the Church, that other 
and less Oriental but equally symbolic and public 
modes of administering the ordinance have sprung 
up. It is felt universally, outside of the close-com- 
munion churches, and is beginning to be felt in them, 
that the argument from the original custom, and the 



100 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

technical advantage taken of the meaning of the Greek 
word /Wi-ifo, and the nice casuistry shown in defend- 
ing the practice of restricting fellowship to those who 
have been baptized in a particular way, are closely allied 
to that straining at a gnat, and to the tithing mint, 
cummin, and anise, which Jesus himself so pointedly 
rebuked. So long as the public sentiment of the Bap- 
tist communion itself solidly supported the Baptist 
position, the close-communion dogma was a power- 
ful help to the denomination, as all exclusive preten- 
sions and assumptions are to any church. It fostered 
the pride of opinion and pride of sect which are so 
akin to family pride and pride of country, and fed 
the darling conceit of superior orthodoxy, faithful- 
ness, and sanctity. It is my observation, supported 
by all the testimony I draw from religious historj', 
that there can be no assumption too extravagant, 
no pretension too absurd, to become a potent talis- 
man with any party so long as its extravagance and 
absurdity are not suspected at home. It is the un- 
questioned acceptance of the papal pretensions by 
the Roman Catholic constituency in all parts of the 
world for so long a period, that has converted what 
ought to be an element of weakness into a vast and 
magical instrument of power. But when the Savo- 
narolas, Luthers, Abelards, Hyacinthes, begin to rise 
up within the pale, and especially when a large fac- 
tion like the old Catholics raise their protests un- 
der the very shadow of the Vatican, there is the 



THE BAPTISTS. 101 

beginning of the end. The assumptions and pre- 
tensions must be laid aside, or disintegration will 
ensue. So long as nobody but Pedo-baptists criti- 
cised the restricted communion position and the 
immersion pretension, our Baptist brethren rather 
thrived than otherwise by the wordy warfare they 
carried on with other sects on these points ; but now 
that they have to meet the foe within their own fold 
it is a different matter. They will be compelled to 
do one of two things, — not immediately, perhaps, 
but within a generation. Either they must lower the 
peculiar pretension of their order and cease to make 
the baptism by immersion the rigid test of true dis- 
cipleship, or they must be content to see their now 
united and powerful body split into two and per- 
haps ten parties. It is the ordinance of God in 
such cases, and the ordinance of a sect cannot 
withstand it. 

In church government the Baptist denomination 
is strictly congregational. Each church is a little de- 
mocracy by itself, in which no man is called master, 
but all are supposed to be loyally subject to Christ. 
Churches associate themselves together for mutual edi- 
fication and counsel, but still jealously maintain their 
individual rights and independent authority. 

When we are assured by the admirers of an Epis- 
copal form of church government that this is the 
only polity that can secure unity of faith and cohe- 
sion of parts and wide and efficient concert of action, 



102 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

and in proof are cited to the marked superiority in 
these particulars of the Methodist over the Congre- 
gational body, we should, before falling in raptur- 
ously with this theory, turn round and cite them the 
example of the Baptist denomination, more rigidly 
congregational than the Congregationalists them- 
selves, yet as completely a unit in faith and order 
and activity as any sect in the world, and second 
only to the Methodists in numerical growth, and 
much superior to them in wealth, general culture, 
and cosmopolitan diffusion. It is unsafe to gen- 
eralize on any subject until all the facts are taken 
account of. 

The doctrines of the Baptist Church are Calvin- 
istic. They have no common creed like the Presby- 
terians or the Congregationalists, yet their agreement 
in theolog}' is quite as marked as the former and 
much more so than the latter. In common with all 
Calvinistic churches they are feeling the liberalizing 
influence of the Arminian or "free-grace" theory, 
and of the Universalist or impartial grace doctrines. 
But as a sect they hold closer to the ancient and 
awful dogmas of Orthodoxy than any of the great 
denominations ; and on that account, as well as on 
account of their restricted communion notions, the}' 
repel many educated and liberally inclined people, 
who find a more congenial place m the Congrega- 
tional and Episcopal churches. 

The Baptists are particular to emphasize the fact 



THE BAPTISTS. 103 

that they have been from the beginning of their 
history, and in all countries where they have had a 
name, the unfaltering champions of liberty of con- 
science. Roger Williams, the father of the denomi- 
nation in this country, having protested in the 
Massachusetts colony against the interference by 
the civil magistrates with the rights of conscience 
of the people, and having been banished the colony 
for that and for other free talk, went to Rhode Island 
and founded a State, — which is the first example 
in modern times of a community organized on the 
broad principles of civil and religious freedom. It 
is claimed by Baptists, although the claim appears 
to me slightly mythical, that the constitution of 
Rhode Island furnished Thomas Jefferson with the 
model of his draft of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. Certain it is that Baptists everywhere have 
been noted for their love of religious freedom. 

In point of character and ability the ministers of 
the Baptist Church have uniformly held high rank. 
If the}' have wanted the literary air and ecclesias- 
tical manner of the Episcopal clergy ; if they have 
affected a certain rough independence not quite agree- 
able to the Congregational ministers ; if they have 
dealt mercilessly with the " free-grace " amiability 
of the Methodists ; if they have been among the last 
to relax the stern face of disapproval toward the 
liberal sects, — they have been strong in the faith, 
valiant in controversy, able in the Scriptures, and 



104 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

successful in their work. Their love of liberty and 
their independent habits have made them quite ready 
to hear new truth ; and to this fact mav be attributed 
the large number of recruits our own Church has 
received from the Baptists. 






VII. 

THE SWEDENBORGIANS. 



" And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, com- 
ing down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband" — Eev. xxi. 2. 



THE SWEDENBORGIANS 



^"ir*HE Swedenborgian Church is the title I have 
■*■ given to the religious denomination of which I 
am to speak in this Lecture. But the members of 
this sect do not call their Church by this name. It 
is merely a popular designation that has attached to 
them in consequence of their origin from Emanuel 
Swedenborg. They call themselves " The New 
Jerusalem Church," and claim that their organiza- 
tion is the one prophetically beheld by the Revelator 
in the vision described in the text: "And I John 
saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming clown from 
God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for 
her husband. And I heard a great voice out of 
heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with 
men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be 
his people, and God himself will be with them and 
be their God." Their Church, they suppose, is this 
New Jerusalem, or tabernacle of God, established 
among men. 

The closing or 12th article of their faith is in these 
words : — 



108 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

" That now is the time of the Second Advent of the 
Lord, which is a Coming not in Person, but in the power 
and glory of his Holy Word : That it is attended, like his 
first Coming, with the restoration to order of all things in 
the spiritual world, when the wonderful divine operation, 
commonly expected under the name of the Last Judg- 
ment, has in consequence been performed; and with the 
preparing of the way for a New Church on earth, — the 
first Christian Church having spiritually come to its end 
or consummation, through evils of life and errors of doc- 
trine, as foretold by the Lord in the Gospels : And that 
this New or Second Christian Church, which will be 
the crown of all churches, and will stand forever, is 
what was representatively seen by John when he be- 
held the holy city, New Jerusalem, descending from 
God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for 
her husband." 

This appears to all but New Church people a most 
extravagant claim. When the Roman Church claims 
to be catholic, or universal, its claim is supported by 
a history running through nearly or quite the whole 
period since the advent of Christ, and by an exten- 
sion of its authority and worship over some part 
of every country and people on the globe. And 
when some of the other denominations, as the 
Episcopal, Baptist, and Methodist, announce an 
expectation of absorbing or superseding all the 
others, they can at least point to their wide dis- 
tribution, rapid growth, and great popular influ- 
ence as in some degree confirmatory of their high 
hopes. But when a little handful of churches and 



THE SWEDEN BORGIANS. 109 

people, known in only a very limited portion of two 
or three countries of the earth, and having no appar- 
ent popular attractions, sets up the claim of being 
the Second Christian Church of history, brought 
forth to take the place of all the other organiza- 
tions now and heretofore claiming to be Christian 
churches, and destined itself to stand forever, we 
are apt to treat its pretensions as quite too absurd 
to be reasoned with. It may do us good, however, 
to divest ourselves, if possible, of this unfavorable 
prepossession, and inquire candidly into the charac- 
ter and claims of this singular sect. 

It is now more than a hundred years since Eman- 
uel Swedenborg, the founder of the New Jerusalem 
Church, died at the patriarchal age of 84 (March 29, 
1772). During his long life he accomplished a vast 
amount of literaiy and professional labor, and attained 
great reputation as a scholar and philosopher. His 
tastes and studies in early life were scientific, and his 
first professional service was performed as a mechan- 
ical engineer. He excelled in mathematics, and was 
fond of applying his knowledge to the elucidation of 
practical problems in engineering, finance, geography, 
astronomy, and political economy. Advancing from 
these labors, he began to write treatises on natural 
science and on the high themes of philosophy, occa- 
sionally making an excursion into theology. He ap- 
pears alwaj T s to have been a man of singular rectitude 






110 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

of life and reverence of understanding ; but up to his 
fift} T - seventh year he seems not to have had any idea 
of adding anything to the world's stock of religious 
knowledge. He had become a famous author and a 
recognized luminary in the scientific and philosophi- 
cal world. But at his time of life and with his train- 
ing nothing appeared more unlikely than that he 
should turn out a prophet or apostle of a new relig- 
ion. In this year, however (1745), he entered on a 
wholly new and, as the event proved, remarkable 
career, in which his fame as a philosopher was 
wholly eclipsed by his celebrity as a seer. In this 
year, he tells us, " he was called to a new and 
holy office by the Lord Himself, who manifested 
Himself to him in person, and opened his sight to 
a view of the spiritual world, and granted him the 
privilege of conversing with spirits and angels." 
This office was to reveal the spiritual sense of the 
Sacred Scriptures and communicate to mortals the 
mysteries of the spiritual world. After four years 
of preparation he began the publication of his " Ar- 
cana Celestia," which ran through eight large vol- 
umes, and was succeeded by numerous other works, 
longer and shorter, issued as he completed them, 
down to the year of his death. He also left behind 
him a large amount of manuscript, which was edited 
and published many years after his 'death. The 
amount of these religious writings would make a 
considerable library in themselves. They all relate to 



THE SWEDENBORGIANS. Ill 

the same general subject, and all profess to be given 
under the sanction of a special divine illumination. 
It is claimed by Swedenborg's disciples that every 
volume and chapter and even paragraph of this for- 
midable sum -total of revelations is valuable and true, 
and that use for it all will be found in the course of 
the development of mankind and the progress of the 
New Church. But some volumes, as the ' ' True Chris- 
tian Religion " and " The Divine Love and Wisdom," 
are thought to contain the more essential and needful 
truths of the seer's revelations. I have not, of course, 
read a quarter part of Swedenborg's writings ; but I 
have read the two volumes last named, and have been 
in the habit of reading the synopses and explanations 
and summaries of Swedenborgian doctrine that have 
appeared from time to time for many years. What- 
ever I may not understand of the subject, therefore, 
is due, I think, rather to the obscurity of the matter 
than to lack of information on nry part. 

If I undertook to set forth the philosophy of the 
New Church in its own peculiar phraseology, I fear I 
should make but slight progress in conveying to my 
hearers the meaning of this religious system. There 
is such a wearying iteration of " natural " and " spir- 
itual," " interiors" and "exteriors," and the like 
technical terms, that most persons soon find them- 
selves bewildered and lost. It is a fact that the 
system of Swedenborg demands careful study for 
its apprehension ; and on this account many per- 



112 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

sons discard it summarily, and many more, assum- 
ing that a half-hour's acquaintance with it in some 
tract or sermon has put them in possession of its 
characteristic ideas, make haste to tell the willing 
world how irrational and childish it is. 

A few comparisons and illustrations may help us 
to an understanding of the Swedish seer's philoso- 
phy. All Christians agree to the general proposition 
that all things come from God. But their meaning 
in such a statement is quite different from Swe- 
denborg's. He taught that God only is Life, while all 
other creations and things are organs and receptacles 
of God's life. Man, for example, is an organ of life, 
as the eye is an organ of sight. The life of God flows 
out and fills all organs and receptacles to the extent 
of their capacity. There is, therefore, no indepen- 
dent life in man, or animal, or angel. All life, 
whether in plants, animals, men, or angels, is 
the continual influx of life from Gocl, the fountain. 
The effect of this doctrine may seem at first of no 
practical moment. But on reflection we see that it 
cuts deep and wide. If it is true, then the search 
for vital principles that has been carried on for thou- 
sands of 3 r ears, and which, not being rewarded with 
their discovery, inclines so many to deny that there 
is any life apart from the organ, that is any spiritual 
essence at all, and hence that pure materialism is the 
fact, must be abandoned. Such a search is futile ; 
not because the thing sought after does not exist, 



THE SWEDENBORGIANS. 113 

but because it does not exist in isolation and inde- 
pendency. 

Again, it is a doctrine of Swedenborg, closely allied 
with the one we have just considered, that the material 
universe had a spiritual origin. That is, the physical 
creation is literally and logically God's thought in 
form. It came, not from nothing, but from Himself. 
What we see, touch, and tread upon is the effect of 
which God is the cause. This is the region of ef- 
fects as the spiritual world is the realm of causes. 
As science has demonstrated that the hardest and 
hugest mass of material is capable of being resolved 
into gases, thence into ethers, and we know not into 
what degrees of invisible and impalpable sublimation, 
so Swedenborg, reading the creation forward and not 
backward, tells us that the subtile and to us imper- 
ceptible essence of all life and thought is actually 
capable of putting itself forth in all the varieties of 
form and density observed in what we call the mate- 
rial or physical universe. The spiritual sun gives 
forth emanations, which pass successively through 
many stages, and at last appear a " natural world." 

In harmony with these doctrines, and, perhaps it 
may be said, a part of them, is Swedenborg's theory 
of Correspondences. This theory is, that every nat- 
ural object and organ has a spiritual correspondent. 
Within the natural world is the spiritual, within the 
natural body is the spiritual, within the natural sense 
of the Scriptures is the spiritual, and all the things 



114 WALKS ABOUT Z10N. 

on earth have their correlative things in heaven. In 
view of the general sweep of his philosophy this ap- 
pears to me much the same thing as to say that every 
effect has a cause. For if we accept his doctrine that 
the spiritual world is the sphere of causes and the 
natural the realm of effects, it would seem to follow 
that all these apparent effects must have somewhere 
their real causes. 

The New Church does not accept the whole of the 
canonical Bible as the word of God, but only twenty- 
nine of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, 
and the four Gospels and the Apocalypse in the New. 
To the literal and fully inspired truth of these portions 
it holds with a firmness not excelled by any sect in the 
world. But when the Swedenborgians come to the in- 
terpretation of these Scriptures, their theory of an 
internal sense, and, beyond even that, of a heavenly 
sense, allows them a freedom of opinion in regard to 
the authority of the letter which but few professed be- 
lievers indulge. It is in the interpretation of the Scrip- 
tures that the New Church divines and writers appear 
at the same time at the best and at the worst advan- 
tage. Historical difficulties, conflicts with scientific 
fact, and whatever wears the appearance of legend 
they easily resolve by taking the appeal from the 
natural to the spiritual sense. But when the} T apply 
this method of interpretation to all parts of the Scrip- 
tures, — as much to those that are not prophetical 
and figurative as to those that are, — their discourse 



THE SWEDENBORGIANS. 115 

grows fanciful and often grotesque. Swedenborg 
went carefully over several of the books accepted by 
the New Church as canonical, and explained with 
tedious minuteness what the internal sense of all the 
passages in these books signifies. He also dealt with 
large portions of other books. His disciples, so far 
as they confine themselves to these portions of Scrip- 
ture, are able to maintain a sort of philosophical con- 
sistency in their expositions of the spiritual sense of 
the Word. For it is true that there is a scientific 
connection between all the parts of Swedenborg's 
revelations. A comprehensive system of ideas and 
processes links all his speculations and alleged reve- 
lations in philosophical unity. But as he did not 
cover the entire ground of Scripture by his own ex- 
positions, his followers are left at liberty to employ 
their ingenuity on the remainder. This they do, 
sometimes with illuminating effect, and sometimes 
in a way that must make the seer, if he be one of 
their attendant spirits, according to the doctrine he 
taught, undergo an agony for which his system makes 
no provision. 

Swedenborgians discard the name " Trinity," but, 
as I look at it, hardly the thing. In their view there 
are not three persons in the Godhead, but one. This 
one person, however, has three quite distinct as- 
pects to man. For they hold that Jesus was, " as 
to his interior nature," the absolute Jehovah ; and 
the Holy Spirit, or " Proceeding Energy," as they 



116 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

call it, is Jehovah manifesting Himself in action. 
The difficmMy of explaining how a being born of a 
woman on earth could be the actual and eternal 
Jehovah, they appear to think is entirely obviated 
by saying that this was the manifestation of the 
Divine Truth or Wisdom , — the form which God 
necessarily takes in unfolding his central essence, 
Love, as Truth. But the inevitable reply to this 
sort of reasoning is, that if Jesus was a form of 
Divine manifestation, then he was not God as a 
total personality. It is conceivable that He might 
have manifested Himself simultaneously in many 
worlds, as He did through Jesus in our world ; and 
in a sense it would be true of every one of these 
manifestations, that it was Jehovah. But not in the 
sense, surely, that each manifestation comprised the 
total personalit} 7 of God, so as to be properly de- 
scribed as the actual and absolute God. If so, 
then there may be not only a trinity of persons in 
the Godhead but an infinity of them, all distinctly 
discriminated from each other by their sphere of 
operations and their personal traits, yet all being 
one and the same person. 

The object of the advent of Christ — which was 
accomplished by Jehovah clothing Himself with a 
material body and the external part of the human 
mind, derived from the mother — was to restore the 
lost balance of the spiritual world. The bad spirits 
in the hells had pressed up out of their sphere, and 



THE SWEDENB0RG1ANS. 117 

acquired such an influence over the minds of men in 
the flesh that the tendency was towards universal 
depravity. In short, the hells were threatening to 
swallow down the earth and the heavens. To put 
back the evil spirits within their own realm and en- 
able men to regain a heavenly tendenc} r , was the 
purpose of Christ's coming, — or the incarnation. 
He accomplished this by descending into material 
form, and thus bringing Himself into close spiritual 
connection with imperilled men. By the same means 
also he came into contact with the very evil spirits 
who were luring men down to destruction, and by 
the power of his indwelling Divinity overcame them 
and drove them back. 

The most interesting feature of the New Church 
doctrines is that relating to man's nature and des- 
tiny. In the sense in which the term is generally em- 
ployed, man has not a soul. He is an organ of life, 
filled with life from God, and allowed to take on a 
feeling of life in himself. Here in the flesh he is a 
spiritual and immortal being as really as he ever is 
or will be ; and the spiritual world is as truly here as 
airywhere. But man has an outward envelope to his 
organism, called the body. Within that is still an- 
other envelope, — the spiritual body. This is the 
receptacle of the Divine life. When a man dies, 
the external envelope is stripped off, leaving him 
still the same man he was before, his interior es- 
sence unchanged, but now seeing, feeling, thinking, 



118 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

acting through his spiritual body, as before he did 
through the natural. The effect of putting off the 
external man is to exclude him from connection 
and intercourse with other material bodies and the 
material husk of the world, and to bring him into 
immediate connection with other spiritual bodies 
and with the internal plane of creation called the 
spiritual world. His moral destiny is not immedi- 
ately fixed, but depends on the balance of his loves. 
If in his course hitherto he has been predominantly 
ruled by love of God and love of the neighbor, he will 
naturally turn heavenward, and by the help of min- 
istering angels will gain complete perfection in love 
and wisdom. If his ruling impulses and ambitions 
have been sensual and selfish, he will naturally turn 
towards the hells, where are more congenial spirits, 
thoughts, and occupations, and he will find plenty of 
evil spirits to help him down. There are no torments 
in the hells ; but all the evil spirits, insensible of their 
loss and misfortune, occupy themselves in such un- 
hallowed pleasures and unworthy ambitions as their 
perverted desires suggest. 

There is a verj' manifest tendency recently among 
the writers and preachers of this sect to modif3 T the 
system of Swedenborg sufficiently to allow of as 
much opportunity of change and reformation after 
death as before ; and some have even gone so far 
as to argue that it is not inconsistent with the great 
seer's philosophy to hope that all mankind may at 



THE SWEDENBORGIANS. 119 

the last recoil from evil, ask and find the way out of 
the hells, and finally only the heavens remain to 
glorify God and enjoy him forever. 

It would be interesting to trace the influence of 
some of the chief doctrines of the New Church in 
the literature and tendencies of other churches. It 
is undeniable, I think, that the more cheerful and 
rational ideas of the Swedenborgian philosophy have 
penetrated the minds of thousands of thoughtful men 
in all the churches, and inclined them to a better and 
happier view of God and man, life and immortality. 
Much of their philosoph}' is to me fantastic, and will, 
I think, at length be abandoned by themselves. But 
that they have contributed several new and ennobling 
truths, of the widest range and the profoundest hu- 
man interest, to the world's stock of religious knowl- 
edge is their high claim on our permanent regard. 



VIII. 

THE UNITARIANS. 



11 And the Scribe said unto him : Well, Master, thou 
hast said the truth : for there is one God ; and there is 
none other but he" — Mark xii. 32. 



THE UNITARIANS. 



^•pHOMAS STARR KING, who belonged to both 
-■*- denominations, was once asked to explain the 
difference between the Universalists and the Unita- 
rians. His witty reply was: Ci The Universalists 
believe God is too good to damn them ; the Unita- 
rians believe they are too good to be damned." I 
suppose this smart antithesis, like most others of its 
class, would hardly be found to hold if pressed to an 
application. In strict truth, Universalists do not en- 
tertain any higher opinion of God's goodness than 
Unitarians ; and, in point of fact, it is also doubt- 
ful whether Unitarians depend more on their merits 
than do Universalists. But Mr. King's generaliza- 
tion interprets, as by a flash of poetic fire, the 
characteristic tendency of each sect. While the}' 
may be said to agree, almost to the letter, in the 
statement they make of the Divine character, it is 
nevertheless true that when they come to put the 
emphasis on the statement they select different 
points. Both affirm belief in one God, the Father. 



124 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

The Unitarian, however, reads it, " one God, the 
Father," while the Universalist renders it, " one 
God, the Father " Again, there is entire harmony 
in the view and in the terms of statement of the na- 
ture of man. But when a Universalist takes up the 
idea of human nature as related to the subject of re- 
ligion, he easily makes it quite subordinate to sev- 
eral other ideas. In the hands of a Unitarian, 
however, the fact of the essential rectitude of man's 
nature at once assumes a first importance. So we 
see that the brilliant and lamented apostle of a 
truly liberal Christianity expressed with his usual 
nice felicity the salient distinction between the two 
principal sects of the Liberal Church. 

It is a well-attested fact that it is extremely diffi- 
cult for a person or an institution to overcome the 
tendencies born with it. I knew a house carpenter 
whose proclivity as a boy was to use his left hand for 
his right. He began early to correct this bent of 
nature, and had apparently cured himself. But let 
him be surprised, or have a critical duty in hand, 
and the tool would pass from right to left by an 
irresistible suggestion of the still unconquered na- 
ture. It often happens that a man designed by 
Providence for a poet or a preacher is drawn aside 
by the lure of fortune, and passes his life in selling 
dry-goods or in managing a mill. But; he will some- 
times deal in epigrams over the counter, and interlard 
his invoices with moral reflections. It was the harm- 



THE UNITARIANS. 125 

less caprice of the late N. P. Willis that he acquired 
some sort of distinction over the rest of his country- 
men by dressing himself like an English lord, and affect- 
ing the manners and habits of a Briton . But the veneer 
was too thin to disguise the palpable Yankee under- 
neath. You often hear people complaining of Boston 
that it is provincial and conservative, unlike New York, 
Chicago, St. Louis, and other wide-awake American 
cities. And sometimes well-intending persons, stimu- 
lated h\ sectional pride and impatient of the village 
habits of the New England metropolis, make a brave 
dash to put a Chicago air on the enterprises of Boston. 
But such efforts are not brilliantly successful. You can- 
not get the bald and spectacled old gentleman, who has 
got past his pranks, and who begins to enjo}' a sedate 
respectabilit}-, to trick himself out like a dandyish soph- 
omore. He smiles compassionately on the bewitched 
youngsters and lets them have their day. But his 
duties and delights lie in far different directions. 
Boston is staid, and careful, and venerable. It has 
grown so through the habits of two hundred years. 
Something ma} T }'et happen to let its Young America 
loose, and convert it into a fast and funny Western 
city. But if so, the Boston of history, the Boston of 
fame, and the Boston of our affection will have dis- 
appeared. Let us hope it may retain its ancient and 
honored characteristics, and though reproached as pro- 
vincial and slow, rnay alwa} r s be, as always it has been, 
the one American city whose granite peculiarities re- 
sist the lacquer of fashion. 



126 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

The Unitarian body illustrates this law. It had 
a speculative rather than a dogmatic origin. It 
was itself the outcome of a long-accumulating ten- 
dency in the Orthodox churches of New England. 
No one person went out from the others, and set- 
ting up a new banner called for volunteers to a sep- 
arate theological system. No system was framed, 
no body of opinion or belief was promulgated. 
Gradually a considerable party had developed in 
the Congregational churches which was inclining 
to freer speech, freer forms, freer thought than 
Puritanism had approved. The two points at which 
the divergence was most marked, were the na- 
ture of God and the nature of man. The carica- 
tures of the Almighty in which Calvinism had in- 
dulged, and the monstrous assumptions of human 
inability and depravity in which it had delighted, 
were producing their natural fruit with the more 
cultivated and catholic minds. There was a steady 
advance of more rational opinion, a constantly in- 
creasing assertion of the Divine goodness and of 
human ability. No one knew to what extent this 
leaven had permeated the churches, nor would have 
known, probably, had not the controversy between 
Dr. Channing and Dr. Worcester broken out in 
1815. It was well known that many influential 
and learned ministers were anti-Calvinists and 
anti-Trinitarians. Mr. Buckminster of Boston, Mr. 
Thacher, Mr. Channing, Dr. Ware, and Andrews 



THE UNITARIANS. 127 

Norton, who as earl} 7 as 1812 began the publi- 
cation of an anti-Trinitarian periodical, were well 
known to belong to what was called the " Arian " 
party in the New England churches. But there 
seems to have been no intention to found a new 
sect, and no desire for it. Yet the correspondence 
between Dr. Worcester and William Ellery Chan- 
ning furnished the opportunity for the ministers 
and churches to take sides, which they began to do ; 
and in a few years a tolerably well-defined line was 
drawn between the Unitarian and Trinitarian parties. 
The preponderance of learning and of literary ability 
was with the new party. ■ This drew Harvard Col- 
lege into their alliance, and gave Unitarianism a pres- 
tige in this country which it has never lost. To this 
circumstance, also, is to be referred the fact that the 
Unitarian movement became from the start largely 
literary. The most brilliant coterie of scholars and 
men of letters this country has ever boasted was 
grouped in and around the Unitarian secession, 
with Harvard College for a citadel, in the first 
and second decades of the present century. 

You see this sect came into being in a way to 
escape all the usual disadvantages of sectarian 
origin. It had no infancy. It was born full-grown. 
At its very beginning it had numbers, wealth, high 
social position, the strength of eminent names, and 
the fascinations of the best culture of the period. 
Such a sect could not be aggressive in the usual 



128 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

sense of new religious parties ; that is, it could have 
no zeal to carry its light into remote districts and 
raise its standard among the common people. The 
position for which other sects wage fierce war for 
half a century or more, it had without striking a 
blow. It was at the top : what inducement had 
it to go down and wrangle with the crowd ? It dis- 
dained the service. Keeping on the high range of 
its origin, it might expect to win to itself by the nat- 
ural attraction of its superior position the intelligence 
and taste of the country. Its vocation was thus 
marked out for it. The Unitarian body was not to 
be a church, with an indwelling impulse to gather 
and assimilate with itself all whom it could win to 
its fold ; it was not to be a great missionary organ- 
ization, burning to communicate its new secret of 
quickening truth to all the children of men ; it was 
not to be a school of theology, indoctrinating chosen 
men with its full and elaborate exposition of divinity, 
and depending on them to argue out the old and argue 
in the new dispensation. It had none of these pur- 
poses or impulses. It was a "movement," not a 
church ; a tendency, not an abrupt departure ; an 
ethical and literary culmination, rather than a theo- 
logical principia ; a rational overflow from the nar- 
row-walled reservoir of New England Orthodoxy, 
rather than a channelled stream, starting from a dis- 
tinct fountain and flowing with increasing volume to 
the inevitable sea. 



THE UNITARIANS. 129 

Accordingly, the Unitarian body has never been 
able to effect an}' compact organization, nor to frame 
a creed that commanded general assent. According- 
ly, it never could make of itself a mere sect, but has 
persisted in being a kind of ethical and literary club, 
the members agreeing in no one thing, except that 
each was at liberty to free his mind. Accordingly, 
there has been no definite line of advance for the de- 
nomination, and no particular stopping-place for any 
one. Some have not only not got beyond Channing, 
but have turned back, and now affirm propositions 
which he disputed. Some are particular to let it be 
known that they believe and preach universal salva- 
tion as explicitly as Hosea Ballou did or Dr. Miner 
does, — thus def} T ing the cautious conservatism of 
the elder Unitarian divines, who were careful to keep 
aloof from the Universalist heres} 7 , and who, for 
fear of being confounded with the Universalists, 
actually drew up and subscribed a statement to the 
effect "that the final restoration of all men is not 
revealed in the Scriptures." Others go to the ex- 
treme of the German Rationalism of thirty years 
ago, discarding not only the deity but the divinity of 
Jesus, scouting the miracles of the New Testament, 
and in fact all supernaturalism, as old wives' fables, 
and preaching a sort of transcendental theism, the 
effect of which on most minds is to leave them in 
doubt of the reality of a personal God or of any per- 
sonal immortality for man. The Unitarian denomi- 

9 



130 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

nation presents the anomaly in the history of the 
Christian religion of a considerable number of clerg} T - 
men preaching regularly to congregations, often in old 
and famous churches, and performing the functions of 
pastors in large parishes, who nevertheless are not 
Christian believers in any sense whatever, — have 
no faith in Christ nor in anything alleged to be di- 
vine about him or his religion, and are themselves 
undecided whether to think God is a myth and the 
future life a dream. These clergymen are uniformly 
men of decided ability^, of high character, and often 
of rare literary endowments and graces. They are 
occasionally read out of the denomination by some 
indignant member of the right wing, and here and 
there one — like Mr. Abbot or Mr. Weiss — takes him- 
self away ; but the majority of them hold on to the 
name " Unitarian," to their congregations, and to 
the liberty of unbelief. 

It is on account of the great latitude of opinion 
among the Unitarians, running all the wa\~ from 
moderate Orthodoxy in Dr. Robbins and Dr. Pea- 
body to the baldest infidelity in Mr. Chad wick and 
Mr. Potter, that one finds it quite impossible to 
make any summary of Unitarian belief. It is easy 
enough to find out what individual Unitarians hold 
to, but no one is authorized to say what the denomi- 
nation, or indeed any portion of it r believes. They 
do not, with a few exceptions, themselves make 
much account of their theology. They have much 



THE UNITARIANS. 131 

to s a}* about their "views" and " ideas," but very 
little about their doctrines, their s}'stem, or their 
theology. 

It is obvious to me that we should fail entirely 
both in understanding the Unitarian movement in 
this country and giving an account of it, if we tried 
to measure and describe it by the rules applicable to 
a sect. There are zealous sectarians in it ; men who 
love the name and cause, and who labor with energ\ T 
and effect to extend and establish it. But as a peo- 
ple, the Unitarians are not so anxious to build them- 
selves up as to enjoy the freedom of their opinions 
and the quiet of their own circle. Evidently we must 
take them for what they are, and not try to fit them 
into a place of our own making. They do not seem 
to be destined ever to be numerous, or closely united, 
or influential in man}' communities and with the 
masses. It looks now as if they would not perpetu- 
ate their distinct organization for mairy generations 
more. Harvard College is no longer of much ad- 
vantage to Unitarianism ; it is now the public's 
and America's to a degree that makes its service 
to a denomination secondary and incidental. The 
Divinity School, left alone, hardly has a perceptible, 
not to speak of a controlling, influence. The Uni- 
tarian Association is properly a bureau of liberal 
literature, and is altogether the most permanent and 
hopeful thing about the denomination now. But 
even with that the indications are not promising of 



132 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

future growth and perpetuity. Viewed as an effort 
to found a sect, the Unitarian movement can scarcely 
be accounted a success. 

But contemplated as a providential, religious, and 
moral influence, it has a prominent place among the 
most notable of modern times. It has given to the 
literature of religion the contributions that have done 
religion most credit. It has shown that one may dis- 
card all traditional beliefs and not make shipwreck 
of faith, — as such representative men as Clarke, 
Hale, Putnam, Calthrop, Herford, leaders of the 
denomination's best tendencies, happily illustrate. 
It has proved that Christianhry is a reasonable reli- 
gion. It has exposed the folly and wickedness of 
many dogmas that were formerly thought an essen- 
tial part of the gospel. It has furnished some of the 
noblest examples of cultivated Christian manhood 
and womanhood the world has yet had. And it has 
imparted a charm to the stud} T of religious science, 
by showing how even the most abstruse problems 
of theology and the loftiest themes of life may be 
draped in the graceful robes of elegant scholarship 
and made to consort with poetry and philosophy. 
Dr. Channing's discourses here in America, and 
James Martineau's essays in England, undoubted- 
ly constitute an era in both religious literature and 
religious thought. The compeers -and successors 
of these two have been wortrry of them. To name 
the Wares, the Nortons, Professor Noyes, Presi- 



THE UNITAB1ANS. 13 



Q 



dents Walker and Hill, Drs. Dewey, Furness, Bel- 
lows, and Hedge, E. H. Sears, A. P. Peabody, C. 
C. Everett, is to enumerate a galaxy of intellectual 
stars, all of the first magnitude. 

It deserves to be said, too, for the praise of Uni- 
tarianism as a moral influence, that it has uniformly 
given men of character as well as calibre to the pub- 
lic service. No mere politician or office-seeker is a 
legitimate product of Unitarianism. The atmos- 
phere it creates is unfavorable to the development 
of the genus demagogue. Sterling men, — men of 
culture, but also men of brain ; scholars in politics 
and noble Romans in fornm or field : the Adamses, 
Quincys, Everetts, Andrews, Hoars, and Curtises, — 
are its tj-pe of public men. In business, too, the 
Unitarian Christian is certainly not put to shame by 
either the character or deeds of his severer brother. 
It is a proverb that no good enterprise of charity, 
humanity, patriotism, or art has been started in 
Boston for fifty years without the generous leader- 
ship of Unitarian philanthropy and funds. In short, 
I believe when the whole truth is told and full jus- 
tice done, it will be found that no religious body in 
this country, or in anj T other, has exerted on the 
whole a more powerful or a more wholesome influ- 
ence on theology, on general literature, on what 
Emerson calls "manners," and on the whole upper 
ranges of thought and life, than the comparatively 
little sect of Unitarians. I feel a personal obligation 



134 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

to them which it is a pleasure to confess. And on 
behalf of my own denomination, I embrace the occa- 
sion to say, that we have had a powerful, though 
indirect, help from the Unitarian body which has 
been far more important to us than we have always 
been willing to acknowledge. It has been difficult 
for the Universalist Church to do justice to the Uni- 
tarian, for the reason that it has always been impos- 
sible for the Unitarian bod}' to do justice to the 
Universalist. The rule of Saint John, "¥e love him 
because he first loved us/' has had a reverse opera- 
tion in the relations of these two churches. When 
the Universalists were humble, poor, unlettered, the 
Unitarians were rarely conscious of their existence, 
and then only to join in reproach of the sect ever} T - 
where spoken against. If the unpopular Universal- 
ists could have had the moral support of their nearest 
theological relatives, the Unitarians, seventy-five or 
even fifty years ago, there is little reason to doubt 
that both parties would to-day stand stronger in 
numbers and influence. That support was studi- 
ously denied. The natural effect on the Universal- 
ist ministers and prominent laymen of that period, 
as well as on their immediate descendants, was to 
engender a feeling not altogether kindly. And 
when, later on, the Universalists having fought their 
way into wide public recognition and a position of 
assured respect, the new generation of Unitarians 
made some overtures to them, they were responded 



THE UNITARIANS. 135 

to rather coolly, and in some instances rudely re- 
pelled. It is a shame* that two churches having so 
much in common, and carrying forward the same 
work of religious enlightenment, should not stand 
in closer relations of sympatlry. But it cannot now 
be helped. There is still a disposition on the part 
of many Unitarians to patronize their Universalist 
brethren, and there is the memory of the old slight, 
and there is the potent influence of family traditions 
and of diverse tendencies. But the truly catholic 
and Christian men in each can and will hold fellow- 
ship and work in harnioiry if not in concert. 

If the serene and lofty spirit of Channing be per- 
mitted to acquaint itself with what is passing in 
the land for whose elevation he labored with such 
matchless resources of wisdom and foresight and 
eloquence, and especially if it inay know what is 
passing in his own beloved commonwealth and city, 
I think he must have a pure pleasure in beholding 
how now the very sentiments he incurred reproach 
for preaching are widely welcomed all over the coun- 
try, and nowhere more hospitably than in those the- 
ological seminaries and pulpits which sixty years 
ago accounted it a duty the} T owed both to God and 
to man to denounce the opinions and defame the 
character of their author. So the truth marches 
on ! 



IX. 

THE UNIVERSALISTS. 






" Beloved, now are we the sons of God ; and it doth 
not yet appear 'what we shall be ; but we know that when 
He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; for we shall see 
Him as He is.' — 1 John iii. 2. 



THE UNIVERSALISTS, 



A SI come to speak of m} 7 own church, the famil- 
■*■ ■*■ iar lines of Burns run in my mind and so off 
my pen, — 

"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as others sea us ! 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 

And foolish notion : 
What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us, 

And e'en Devotion ! " 

David Hume remarked that it is difficult for any one 
to speak long of himself without vanity. It would he 
natural that some part of this peril should attend the 
effort to speak of one's own family, church, or party. 
And, as a matter of fact, I believe it is quite widely 
recognized that whatever any one has to say of the 
merits of the organization he represents, is to be 
taken with some grains of allowance. Besides the 
natural bias one has in favor of the sect or cause 
that embodies his own beliefs, there is the feeling 
that it would be dishonorable to bear witness against 



140 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

his own family, and the knowledge that, by a sort 
of unwritten but imperative code, he is expected 
to speak well of it, or not at all. It thus comes to 
pass that party papers and orators make a study of 
showing only the most favorable side of their affairs, 
and often they do not scruple to strain the truth in 
doing that. On the other hand, aware that other 
party organs make a point of concealing what is not 
creditable to their side, they count it a part of their 
duty to hunt up and spread before their readers all 
the disreputable things done, or alleged to be done, 
by those of the contrary part. It is obvious that 
nothing could be more mischievously misleading 
than such a party organ. It spreads before you 
each day two pictures, — one of which is an exag- 
gerated delineation of the merits of " our folks," 
and the other of which is a one-sided and over- 
drawn representation of the wickedness of " our 
neighbors." Religious journals have less tempta- 
tion to indulge in these luxuries of self-delusion 
and misrepresentation than political ; and preach- 
ers are precluded b} r the nature of their work from 
running to the same excess of partisan extrava- 
gance as stump orators. But the infirmity exists 
here as elsewhere ; and it is a rather rare thing 
to meet with a member of any religious bod}', who 
can deal candidly either with his own church or 
with another. 

While not making pretension to be more than hu- 



THE UNIVERSALISTS. 141 

man in our virtue, it appears to me there are two faults 
we ought studiously to avoid. It sometimes happens 
that the members of a particular party or church fall 
into the bad habit of finding fault with everything and 
everybody at home, and, by way of heightening the 
effect of their criticisms, are forever telling how much 
better other people do and are. The}' cleave to the 
camp for some mysterious reason, but make it ap- 
pear so poor and weak and mean by comparison 
with the camp of the enemy, that you wonder all the 
while why they do not desert and go where there is 
so much more safety, order, and comfort. This 
carping habit is equally harmful to those who culti- 
vate it and to the organization to which they beloug. 
It is a morbid state of mind, akin to that w r hich 
makes a pampered appetite turn away in affected 
disgust from a table loaded with tempting delicacies; 
it is childish and wicked, and grown men should be 
ashamed of it. The other and more common fault 
is to imagine that all the good intentions, wisdom, 
and grace have met in our organization, and so, of 
necessity, left all the sinister purposes and follies 
and crudeness for the other party. We have no 
business to deify a mere instrumentality, like a 
political part}' or a religious sect. Our duty is to 
look beyond these to the uses the}' serve, and hold 
ourselves in that large frame of mind in which we 
shall recognize that all these divisions are matters of 
temporary human convenience, adopted as a neces- 



142 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

sity of going forward by well-defined paths to a 
mount of vision, on whose summit the need of them 
will be past and the memoiy of them lost. Faithful 
to the light we have, and persistent and enthusiastic 
in following the clew it reveals to us, we are to be too 
conscious of the vastness of the radiance shed down 
on all the world through all the ages, to be carried 
away with the conceit that we alone are the people, 
and that wisdom will die with us. 

The Universalist Church dates its origin as a sep- 
arate religious organization from the preaching of 
John Murray, which was begun here in the New 
Jersey wilderness in September, 1770. Mr. Mur- 
ray was not the first preacher of Universalis m, even 
in this country ; but he was, provide ntially, the one 
around whose preaching the elements of a definite 
Universalist organization began to take form. The 
idea that the human race is one in destiny as it is 
one in origin — which is the root-thought of Univer- 
salism — appears to have been entertained by some in 
every race where the belief in immortality has grown 
into prominence. It is a fact of much significance 
that the Jews almost unanimously hold to universal 
restoration ; and they are positive that this not only 
now is but from time immemorial has been the 
orthodox belief of the Israelites. I met in Phila- 
delphia an intelligent Chinaman, to whom I was 
introduced by a friend as a preacher of the view 



THE UNIVERSAL1STS. 143 

of religion which the Chinaman had, in a previous 
conversation, professed. I found him clear in his 
own faith ; and emphatic in the opinion that the more 
intelligent of his countrymen, of all grades and shades, 
were believers in the salvation of all souls. 

In the early days of Chris tianhVy it does not appear 
that the question of human destiny was much de- 
bated. In the JSTew Testament, the fact of a future 
life is announced as one of the peculiar and most 
glorious revelations of the gospel. Saint Paul, the 
great expounder of Christianity, often alludes to this 
pre-eminent revelation, and in two or three instances 
undertakes to argue and explain it in detail. But 
he never mentions it in a way to imply that some por- 
tion of mankind is to have a different destiny from 
the rest ; while in his expositions he contents himself 
with showing that as all die like the natural head of 
the race, Adam, so all are made alive like the spirit- 
ual head of the race, Christ. He does not intimate 
that their immortality will prove anything other than 
a great blessing to all men. During the first two 
hundred years from the death of Jesus, his religion 
was extended well over all the countries bordering on 
the Mediterranean Sea. In several of the chief cities 
— such as Cseserea, Antioch, Ephesus, Carthage, 
Alexandria, and in two cities further inland, Edessa 
and Mfisibis in Syria — schools of theology sprang up 
in which men were trained for the Christian ministry. 
From the records of those seminaries of Christian 



144 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

learning, so far as they are now accessible to us, 
we learn that in a majority of them the doctrine of 
ultimate universal salvation was distinctly taught. 
Among the eminent representatives of the Chris- 
tian religion that gained a place in the permanent 
history of the Church are many who became promi- 
nent in connection with the advocacy of this doc- 
trine, from the great and learned Origen all the 
way down to Bishop Butler. Unfortunately, in a 
dispute which arose among ecclesiastics in the 
sixth century, the doctrine of the final holiness of 
all souls was reckoned in among the things that the 
victorious party — which is always the orthodox par- 
ty — condemned. The seal of a Church council set 
against it, and enforced, as was then the custom, with 
pains and penalties, had the effect to discountenance 
and finally to overshadow it. It was not destroyed, 
however, although the darkness and cruelty of the 
succeeding Middle Ages tended in a powerful degree 
to obliterate so merciful a view from the regards of 
men. With the revival of learning, and especially 
with the advent of the Reformation, in which the 
principle of the liberty of conscience began to be re- 
asserted, the doctrine of Universalism reawoke in 
the Church and held an increasing course in Ger- 
many, Sweden, Great Britain, France, and the 
United States. 

One hundred years ago there were a number of con- 
gregations — like Relly's in London, and Mitchell's in 



THE UNIVERSALISTS. 145 

New York — scattered through England and America 
that lifted up the standard of universal salvation. But 
they had no relations with each other and probably 
no knowledge of each other. In fact it was many 
years after John Murray preached his first, and I 
may sa} T after he preached his last, sermon in Amer- 
ica that direct steps to form an organization were 
taken. During a period of at least a quarter of a 
century there was much preaching of Universalis m, 
but little effort to gather congregations or to main- 
tain churches. Universalists were very poorly agreed 
among themselves. In 1800 John Murray enumerates 
five different descriptions of Universalists in this coun- 
try, and the impulsive patriarch's soul was greatly 
exercised for fear that the mixture of Calvinism and 
Rellyanism, which he held to be the pure doctrine, 
should suffer corruption at the hands of other preach- 
ers. At this time the Universalists were a sort of 
American dissenters. The}' were composed of intel- 
ligent people, belonging generally to the great mid- 
dling class of the population, who had done with 
Calvinism and were waiting to see what next. The 
advent of preachers of Universalis m sounded a call 
to them. They went, heard, assented ; and if their 
leaders had been ecclesiastically wise, the}' might have 
been gathered into churches, and instructed in all the 
orderly ways of church life. But for a whole gener- 
ation little or nothing of this sort was done. In 
m J judgment this was a grave mistake. It was one 

10 



146 WALKS ABOUT Z10N. 

from which our denomination suffered, more than has 
ever been told, for a full half-century, and from which 
it suffers still. A loose, unorganized, undisciplined, 
undirected multitude, the Universalists had no posi- 
tive work laid out for them, no standards to main- 
tain, and no vocation but to oppose Orthodoxy. This 
was our church boyhood. The boy is father to the 
man. The unregulated, wayward, negative habits 
contracted then are not outgrown yet. It is to-day, 
after a half-century of effort in the direction of organ- 
izing and disciplining our host, much more difficult 
to accomplish a work of manifest proprietj' and util- 
ity with our people than it is with most other churches. 
Ministers and people alike contracted lawless habits. 
They began to question whether religion should have 
any organization, any rites, any polity, any order at 
all. It was a mischievous era for us. We learned 
the polemic art well in those days, but we neglected 
almost altogether the noble and refining art of Chris- 
tian culture. 

In the mean time the Universalist theology, which 
as I have said was without coherency or system, was 
taken in hand by a master mind. Hosea Ballou, for 
whom in the first years of my acquaintance with Uni- 
versalism I entertained no special reverence, I have 
come to look upon as one of the great religious 
leaders and thinkers of mankind. With the slender- 
est stock of learning and the scantiest supply of lit- 
erary helps, this remarkable man conceived and put 



THE UNIVERSALISTS. 147 

into force a grand and thoroughly compacted system 
of theology, which, with certain incidental modifica- 
tions, commands the assent, as it extorts the admi- 
ration, of the wisest and most accomplished of his 
successors three-quarters of a century later. I do 
not believe full justice has been clone, even in his 
own denomination, to this great man. He deserves, 
I believe, to rank with Augustine, Luther, Calvin, 
Wesley, Channing, the most original mind of them 
all, in the great hierarchy of theological masters. 
He gave us our theology. He also first distinctly 
saw that we were called to be a coherent religions 
body, and undertook the difficult task of drawing the 
independent elements into some kind of unit}'. He 
laid the foundations of our literature, also, starting 
our first paper and our first periodical. From Hosea 
Ballou we do, in point of fact, actually date. He is 
much more the father of our sect, both historically 
and theologically, than John Murray. With him we 
begin to take our place among the recognized relig- 
ious forces of the world. 

Some of my readers are probably thinking it strange 
that I give such prominence to Hosea Ballou' s theol- 
ogy ; for they have been accustomed to think that his 
theology consisted in the maintenance of the doctrine 
that all sin and all suffering are confined to this state 
of being. This is sometimes called the ct Ballouian" 
doctrine, or Ballou Universalism. A But it is surpris- 
ing, when one comes to read the treatises in which he 



148 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

elaborated his system of theology and the articles in 
which he expounded and defended it, to see how little 
allusion he makes to this point, and how cautiously 
that little is phrased. I suppose his reputation in 
connection with this particular theory of the relation 
of this life to the next was gained while he was edi- 
tor of the " Uniyersalist Magazine," in which capa- 
city he often undertook in a fatherly way to correct 
what he deemed the errors of his brethren. At any 
rate, it was soon known that he held this view to be 
Uniyersalist orthodoxy ; and such was the command- 
ing weight of his name and the dread of being sub- 
jected to his remorseless logical dissection, that few 
ventured to broach the opposite theory in his neigh- 
borhood. But it should be understood that Hosea 
Bailout system of theology — embracing his views of 
the Divine nature, of the rank and mission of Jesus, of 
the nature of man, of the purpose of the human crea- 
tion, of the method of the Divine Providence, of the 
authority and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, 
and of the destiny of mankind — remains intact, what- 
ever view be taken of the relation of man's experience 
in this stage of being and the next. It is unquestion- 
able that the denomination has, almost unanimously, 
repudiated his philosophy on that point. But it is 
just as undeniable that it holds by every one of the 
essential points of his theological "system, and is 
likely to for an indefinite future. 

As a separate sect, the growth of the Uniyersalist 



THE UNIVERSALISTS. 149 

Church has been only moderate. It had everything 
to do in the beginning, with all the other sects a unit 
against it, and with unwise leadership at home. Then 
came the period of creating and testing its theological 
system. To that followed its educational era, in which 
it carried through the great work of establishing for 
itself schools and colleges. Then came the period 
when it began to turn more directly to the duty of 
effecting a thorough organization and developing par- 
ish and church life. The last two eras overlap each 
other and are still uncompleted. 

What will be the success of the later attempts to 
build up a true and permanent Christian Church I 
do not feel competent to predict. I long for it with 
a great, insatiable yearning. I feel that we have the 
doctrines that commend themselves to the reason 
of enlightened man, and that are suited to man's 
highest and broadest spiritual culture. I cannot see 
why it should not be written down in the Divine 
decrees that a Church having these great advantages 
should be built up here in this free domain, to wax 
stronger and greater and more glorious throughout 
the history of the Republic. I feel that it would be a 
mighty promoter of the truest Christian civilization, 
a consolation to the bruised hearts of all the disap- 
pointed and the lowly, and a shrine wholly worthy 
the home of intelligence and liberty. But it may be 
that the unerring Wisdom has ether designs. I see 
clearlv that the mission of the Universalist Church 



150 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

thus far has been rather to enlarge others than 
increase itself. Distinctive Universalism is only 
preached in Universalist pulpits and printed in 
Universalist papers and books, but incidental and 
inferential Universalism is now preached and pub- 
lished and sung, to an almost startling extent, in 
all the churches. The believers in the triumphant 
power of Truth and Goodness are not confined to 
any sect. It is wonderful how, against their the- 
ological systems, against the course of training in 
their theological seminaries, against the solemn 
letter of their confessions and creeds, against the 
oft-uttered warning of their most eminent guides, 
and against the narrowing influence of their revi- 
val machinery, the churches of the country drift 
steadily out into Universalism. If it goes on for 
fifty years to come as for twenty-five past, the 
special work to which the Universalist Church ap- 
pears to have been assigned by Providence will 
have been largely accomplished. 1 

But whatever this church is to do or become as an 
organization, one thing, I think, is clear. It stands 

1 My full thought here demands the further remark, that the 
special work of a sect is not its whole work, perhaps not its most im- 
portant work. The Universalist Church has the same warrant to 
exist and continue the work of Christian culture and nurture after 
it has spoken its special message and had it allowed in the court of 
religion that the Methodist or Congregationalist Church has. In com- 
mon with the other churches it has a call to be so long as it has a 
work to do. 



THE UNIVERSALISTS. 151 

for the fullest and most rational gospel that the hu- 
man mind has ever been invited to examine or the 
human heart to enjoy. Universalism, as hitherto 
expounded and applied, is without doubt incomplete 
and faulty. It will be better understood and more 
consistently set forth. But its seed-thought, — that 
God is the eternal Father of mankind, and that 
right and not wrong, good and not evil, happiness 
and not misery are the sure outcome of his crea- 
tion and providence, — is God's own thought, and is 
as sure of the whole religious field erelong as noon 
is to follow the dawn. 

I refrain from sajing much of the character and 
peculiarities of Universalists, lest I might run into 
bias of some kind. I should hardly do justice to my 
own feeling, however, if I omitted to sa}', that, after 
having known this people in many States and studied 
them in many situations, I am not conscious 'that 
they have an} T defects of a serious kind which they 
do not share with the members of other churches. I 
have found them uniformly wholesome, honorable, 
trustworthj' people, good citizens, sound moralists, 
lovers of sincerity, and foes of sham. I hear it said 
they are not so religious as some other Christians. 
I allow it. But I remember it was Saint Paul who 
said, " Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all 
things ye are too religious." I would have Universal- 
ists more like the man Christ Jesus : I am not par- 
ticular to have them more like the men of Athens. 



X. 

THE SPIRITUALISTS. 



" And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, 
I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh : and your 
sons and your daughters shall p>rophesy, and your young 
men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream 
dreams : and on my servants and on my handmaidens 
I will p our out in those days of my spirit, and they 
shall prophesy." — Acts ii. 17, 18. 



THE SPIRITUALISTS. 



TT is the teaching of Christianity that God is a 
-*- spirit, and that man, his human child, is also 
a. spirit, who originates on the earth, and who, for 
the purpose of adaptation to an earthly life, takes 
form in an animal or earthly body. It also teaches 
that this earthly bod} T is a temporary habitation, 
from which the spirit emerges when death takes 
place. After the death of the body it teaches that 
the spirit — though still more really alive than before, 
and though inhabiting a new body that has devel- 
oped out of the old one, somewhat as the body of 
the new plant has developed out of the old seed — is 
invisible to the bodily sight and intangible to the 
bodily touch, because our media of contact and 
communication are these animal organs, whereas 
the media of the emerged spirit's contact and com- 
munication are spiritual organs. The one cannot 
translate itself to the other by any known natural 
means except by the transition which raises those 
of this lower denomination to the terms of that 



156 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

higher. Death is the process which changes the 
mortal into terms of the immortal, and makes it 
possible for them to unite. 

There is nothing improbable or specially mysteri- 
ous about this. It is a clear and consistent account 
of man's origin and destination, and the mind has 
no objection to offer to it. Yet it ma} T be a mere 
theory, an ingenious invention. Not everything that 
is reasonable is true. When we come to inquire 
why we should accept this teaching, we see that we 
must have some other ground than its reasonable- 
ness and consistency with itself. Granted that it is 
reasonable ; but is it so ? Is this the fact about 
man? What is the authority and where are the 
evidences? These are the inquiries the mind that 
has learned to think and to test conclusions inevita- 
bly makes. 

As to the origin of man and his relation to the 
earth by an animal body, we can verif} r the Christian 
teaching very satisfactorily from our observation 
and experience. Further, the facts of life when 
carefully investigated and intelligently classified 
afford a great many hints and suggest a great mass 
of probabilities as to man's spiritual essence, and as 
to his existence somewhere and somehow when he 
ceases to be visibly alive here. In fact, the effect 
of a careful and candid study of the phenomena of 
mind in our world, aided as such stud} T must ever 
be by the quick intuitions of our own faculties, is 



THE SPIRITUALISTS. 157 

to create a profound impression favorable to the 
truth of what Christianity teaches about the spir- 
itual nature and destiny of man. Yet it falls short 
of assurance. To some minds, perhaps, it is ample 
to produce unhesitating conviction. But to many 
more, and those often of the greatest acuteness, it, 
is insufficient. 

To meet, apparently, just this requirement of 
definite authority and full proof, Christianity pro- 
fesses to come certified to by certain conclusive 
testimonies. Its Author and Founder was a man 
who held exceptional relations with the unseen. He 
lived on terms of professed intimacy with God and 
with the spiritual world. He was capable of bring- 
ing down from that higher plane of existence the 
forces and laws that obtain there into this, and by 
their manifestations on this theatre of physical expe- 
riences demonstrate the fact of a higher realm and 
give illustrations of its character. As the intelli- 
gence of man descends into the realm of merely 
physical forces and materials, and by its magical 
power turns them to products and uses their natu- 
ral action would never reach, so Jesus showed how 
the higher than human intelligence of the unseen 
world descending into the plane of man's acts and 
experiences turns them to uses and issues which man 
himself without that aid could never attain. And to 
crown all, when the time came for Jesus to la} r aside 
his animal vesture, he reappeared, and by many in- 



158 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

fallible proofs authenticated his spiritual existence 
to those who had known him, as a pledge of the 
fact of man's existence as a spiritual being after he 
ceases to exist as an animal or earthly being. The 
proof of these proofs, the evidence of these evi- 
dences, is, of course, itself a matter of verification. 
And the writers of the New Testament recognize 
this by offering the fullest proof of the facts that 
under the circumstances were available. I cannot 
now go into that ; but allowing the facts to be as 
alleged, it is obvious that the Christian teaching 
about man's nature, his relation to this world and 
to a succeeding spiritual state, is attested by the 

best evidences the nature of the case admits of. 

\ 

Resting on these facts, it is evident that Chris- 
tianity creates a strong presumption in favor of the 
truth of Spiritualism. Spiritualism affirms, as its 
special contribution to religious knowledge, that the 
spirits of the departed may and do hold intelligent 
communication with those still in the flesh. Intel* 
ligent Spiritualists, so far as my knowledge of them 
extends, admit that such communication is not 
common, nor in the present state of our spiritual 
education easy. They recognize the barriers be- 
tween the two worlds created by the radical differ- 
ence between physical and spiritual media of contact 
and communication. They do not pretend that the 
passage from the one to the other is effected without 



THE SPIRITUALISTS. 159 

learning and obeying certain imperative conditions. 
What they maintain is, that there is a passage ; that 
suitably organized and instructed persons may find 
it ; that man}' have done so ; and that, therefore, the 
proof of the reality of a spiritual world, with all the 
unspeakable consolations and satisfactions it brings to 
the human soul, is a matter of present verification. 

I presume most of my readers would like to inter- 
rupt me just here and inquire, Do }'ou believe in 
Spiritualism? This is the inquiry I generally en- 
counter when I endeavor to tell what Spiritualism 
is. And to put mj'self in right relations with nry 
readers let me suspend the analysis of the subject 
long enough to reply : That I know nothing of Spir- 
itualism except what I have learned from others. 
I have known and often conversed with members of 
this rather loosely compacted body for many years. 
I have been familiar with their papers almost ever 
since they had any. I have read carefully a few of 
the books of their best authors, and have examined 
a score or more of those written by men and women 
of less repute. I have heard numerous lectures and 
addresses by Spiritualists, and some years ago I was 
present at a number of test seances. But I never 
was witness of any phenomena that appeared to me 
to support the claim of Spiritualism. Although my 
personal knowledge of the matter is thus second- 
hand, it should be observed that my knowledge of 
the facts on which the supernatural claims of Chris- 



160 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

tianity rest is second-hand also. Yet I am a Chris- 
tian, and a devout believer in the fact that Jesus 
was " a man sent from God" to make known to men 
the reality of their heavenly Father's existence and 
his love for them, and to acquaint them with the 
way of life on earth and the fact of life in heaven. 
I have known men and women whose testimony I 
would take on every other subject without question, 
whose affirmations on this subject should be taken — 
if I were sure they had not been self-deluded — as 
conclusive of the truth of their belief. 

Besides, I cannot overlook the weight of the fact 
that there are thousands of such persons, nor can I 
be blind to the force of a great mass of well-attested 
phenomena, which if it does not prove Spiritualism is 
certainly in accord with its philosoplry. When, there- 
fore, I consider the probability, on Christian grounds, 
that some intelligent intercourse should be had be- 
tween our world and the world of departed spirits, in 
connection with the testimony of various kinds that 
such communication is actually taking place, I feel 
no disposition, as I know of no warrant, to deny it. 
I regard it as more than probable that some persons, 
perhaps man} 7 persons, have really had satisfactory 
evidence that those said to be dead are truly alive. 
I receive with caution all testimony on this point, for 
I have learned how easily men are duped by mystery, 
and how large a part a lively fancy plays in produc- 
ing convictions to which the mind, and especially the 



THE SPIR ITU A LIS TS. 161 

feeling, is predisposed. I do not credit a tenth part 
of the alleged manifestations and revelations. I know 
that much of the pretended phenomena is sheer im- 
posture, and much more of it is delusion. Yet after 
I have made all the deductions demanded on this 
score, I cannot in candor deny that much remains 
calculated to carry conviction to unprejudiced minds. 
It is easy enough to put the whole matter aside by 
saying that it is magic, or electricity, or animal mag- 
netism, or psychic force, or, finally and shortly, that 
it is the work of the Devil. But I believe it is not 
pretended that either of these explanations is any- 
thing better than a conjecture. If either of them is 
true, it remains to be settled by demonstration ; and 
until the demonstration is given, we are at the same lib- 
erty to accept the Spiritualist's explanation as either 
of the others. So far as I have ever heard, the most 
important, because the most serious and carefully 
conducted, experiment ever made to test the phe- 
nomena of Spiritualism and ascertain their reality 
and origin was that made some six years since by 
Professors Crookes and Cox and Dr. Huggins, three 
eminent scientific specialists of England. They asso- 
ciated with themselves a number of persons of high 
character and intelligence, and proceeded to try, 
first, whether the alleged phenomena of Spirit-mani- 
festation are real ; and second, whence the} T arise. 
After long and patient experiment, with ever}' pre- 
caution against fraud or self-deception, they reached 

11 



162 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

the conclusion that ' ' many of the phenomena are 
real, though some are delusions and others impos- 
tures." On the question of their origin I believe 
they differed. Professor Cox took the ground, 
which a long series of carefully conducted experi- 
ments made with instruments of great ingenuity 
and delicacy seemed to support, that the force 
which produced the phenomena proceeded in every 
instance from the human structure, and could in no 
case be traced to any source outside of the living 
human organism. Whether it came from nerve, 
ganglia, brain, or from an invisible inhabitant of 
these, he could only conjecture. His demonstrations 
shook the faith of some in Spiritualism. But on the 
other hand they were hailed by others as strong sci- 
entific confirmation of the faith. In a case where 
nothing seems settled against the claims of Spirit- 
ualism, it seems to me only fair to allow that its 
own explanation of the phenomena is, at least, 
probable. 

There are other features of Spiritualism which, I 
suppose, a believer in its facts and philosophy would 
make account of. It professes to give trustworthy 
information of the location of the spirit-land, of its 
climate, productions, occupations, and society. It 
would be natural to suppose, that, if -Spiritualism is 
true at all, its value would consist and its usefulness 
be shown in the revelations it would make of the 



THE SPIRITUALISTS. 163 

society and scenery of the spiritual realm. I do 
not know how its revelations appear to other minds, 
but to me they are by a large majority, and I may 
say uniformly, very unsatisfactory. I have many 
volumes of these alleged revelations and descrip- 
tions. They are to me very dreary reading. They 
are so obviously fanciful, so crude and childish and 
ridiculous, that I am certain they embrace scarcely a 
grain of that wisdom which comes down from above. 
In fact, the literature of Spiritualism thus far is al- 
most altogether chaff. Its extravagance and semi- 
lunacy, set off, as they generally are, with plentiful 
lack of information and of literary grace, have had 
more to do with turning intelligent people away 
from it, as from a fountain of madness, than all 
other things combined. 

Then, too, it has been the fate of Spiritualism, 
even more than of an}- other system in its infancy, 
to be loaded with a miscellaneous cargo of "isms" 
and " ologies" representing every social and scientific 
craze of the period. Justly or unjustly it must bear 
the odium of all the adventurers, sciolists, moun- 
tebanks, and social anarchists of every grade of 
idiocy or infamy that have rushed pell-mell upon its 
platform. I am not so poor a philosopher nor so 
paltry a religious partisan as to maintain that the 
doctrine characteristic of Spiritualism has an}' neces- 
sary connection with these follies ; nor do I hold it, 
as a religious theory, in any proper sense responsible 



164 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

for them. I merely point out the fatal fact of their 
fellowship ; and I am only exercising the prerogative 
of a friend in saying to the believers in Spiritualism, 
that until they organize, separate themselves from 
the motley crew that now overrun them and subvert 
their idea to all manner of base uses, and devote 
themselves in an orderly and serious manner to the 
exposition and diffusion of their special doctrines, 
they must give up the hope of engaging the stead- 
fast interest or even the respect of truly good and 
influential people. We have too much pandemo- 
nium in societ}^ at the best ; we do not want it 
to become chronic and licensed under any form of 
respectability. Spiritualism owes it to itself, and to 
the large numbers of cultivated and refined people 
who look to it for hope and comfort, to establish 
itself on some definite basis, proclaim its doctrines 
and purposes, and proceed in an orderly way to vin- 
dicate before mankind its claims to the respect and 
confidence of the world. 

It is often claimed by Spiritualist papers and lec- 
turers that the sect has several million adherents in 
this country alone. I have never seen the basis of 
these estimates, and in the nature of the case there 
can be none. There is nothing deserving the name 
of organization among them. It is impossible for 
the most persevering statistician to >get anywhere 
near the facts as to the number of either avowed or 
silent believers. All that we know is, that in every 



THE SPIRITUALISTS. 165 

part of the country and in almost every community 
are some persons who are more or less accurately 
described as Spiritualists. This implies quite a host 
in the aggregate. But how loosely the name is ap- 
plied may be inferred from the fact that they support 
only three journals, and these at a dying rate ; and 
that their total force of regularly employed lecturers 
or ministers is less than three hundred. Until they 
organize themselves, neither they nor any one else 
can tell how numerous they are, or whether they are 
going forward or backward. It is certain that mul- 
titudes of people who once were prominent in this 
movement have subsided. Most of them have fallen 
back into other churches or into the indifference 
in which Spiritualism found them. 

The effect of the great religious agitation produced 
by modern Spiritualism on the welfare of our society 
will be diversely judged by different minds. The 
zealous Spiritualist will tell you that it has eman- 
cipated thought, exploded hoary superstitions, ex- 
tended the popular conception of the range and glory 
of the universe, and converted from the darkness of 
unbelief thousands who had no hope of a future life. 
The opponent of Spiritualism will assure you that it 
has increased infidelity and irreligion a hundredfold, 
has wrecked the happiness of innumerable homes, 
and made more insane people than all other causes. 
I do not accept either declaration. I believe Spir- 
itualism has destroyed some superstition, and I am 



166 WALKS ABOUT ZION. 

clear that it has created some. I think it has 
brought a cheering light to many who sat in dark- 
ness and in the region and shadow of death, and I 
fear it has brought pain and misfortune to some. 
I presume it has made not a few " crazy on that 
subject," as we say ; but I believe it is an unfounded 
slander that it has actually deranged more persons 
than are thrown off their mental balance by religious 
excitement under other forms of belief. On the 
whole, I am inclined to credit it with the production 
of much more good than evil, in that it has con- 
firmed the general belief in a future life, and done 
no small service in dissipating from men's minds the 
cruel apprehension of a spiritual world of woe. 

Spiritualism, we should all remember, is but an- 
other and colossal testimony to the old eternal truth 
that the things which are seen are temporal, but the 
things unseen are eternal. Our Bible and our Chris- 
tianity, and the bibles and religions of all races and 
ages, are voices interjected into our world from that 
other world " that lies around us like a cloud." The 
Pythonism of old, the visions of the Swedish seer, 
the marvels of modern Spiritualism, are attestations 
to us who here are pilgrims and sojourners as all our 
fathers were, that we seek a city to come, —a city 
where we shall not sojourn but abide, a city which 
hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. 
For my own part the gospel is full, clear, and sat- 
isfying. Yet I freely acknowledge that I stand 



THE SPIRITUALISTS. 167 

stronger on the Rock Christ Jesus for the help of 
all the other confirmations of my faith, rising round 
me like a cloud of new witnesses summoned from all 
lands and ages, and though in divers tongues still 
with one accent affirming : " Though our earthly 
house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a 
building of God." 



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